


A little more than kin, and less than kind

by Hermaline75



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Bondage, Corruption, Cunnilingus, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual F/F, F/F, F/M, Jealousy, Masturbation, Mentioned/Referenced Abuse, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Rating May Change, Seduction, Sibling Incest, Spoilers, Threesome, Threesome F/F/M, Unreliable Narrator, from the start and throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 30
Words: 43,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermaline75/pseuds/Hermaline75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucille has always been jealous. But this is different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS EVERYWHERE

"But why her?"

She'd tried to say it gently, but he still roughly shrugged off her hand where she'd trailed it over his shoulder. This was at least the 15th time she'd tried to bring it up and get some answers.

"I only mean that it went against our plan. We had decided on Eunice, I thought. She was richer, after all."

"She was riskier," Thomas bit out. "Edith had only her father to deal with. Eunice had a mother, sister, brother... Too many prying relatives desperate to come and visit this place. God only knows what they'd think if they actually saw the state of it."

Lucille tried not to be hurt. She knew he secretly blamed her for their forced, separate exodus from their home. If only they had waited until they were older. If only they had... Well, they would had been ripped apart. It had been survival, Mother or them. She'd made that decision so he hadn't had to. But still, this was their home. An attack on the house might as well be an attack on her, on her inability to keep it safe from the rising clay and in a fit, habitable state, how she struggled to keep it clean and how it was always filthy no matter how hard she tried to sweep away the crawling, twitching dead things.

And now there was Edith. In their home, the lady of the house, so soft and beautiful. Her golden hair in perfect waves, her porcelain skin, her lips...

It sickened her to know those lips had tasted Thomas.

But never mind. She would soon be a twitching dead thing herself.

"It just seems like you saw Edith and decided all of a sudden that you could have none but her."

She was prodding at the wound in her heart, viciously tearing at it to see how deep the sting would reach. Thomas rubbed at his eyes, like he was wiping away tears.

"I'll admit, she intrigued me. She is clever. She writes. She has interests."

"And as forfeit for catching your eye, she dies. Poor little thing, lured to your side. I almost feel sorry for her."

The way he looked at her, half-turned away, over his shoulder, somehow made her stomach clench in fear, worry, fluttering like an anxious bird.

"Sister," he breathed, face softening a moment too late for her to believe it. "You are jealous. Please, don't be. She is nothing to you. An interesting bauble, a pretty distraction. My love, you know my devotion is true."

He'd caught her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles in supplication before turning to kiss her wrist where the silken blue ribbons of her veins nestled just beneath the skin.

"It is your bed that I share," Thomas murmured, eyes cast down. "Our future that I treasure."

She leant back, letting him crawl up her body, so serpentine. As he had always been. Even when they were young and unsure, he had been so, instinctive and striking.

It would have been so easy. She could have just let go. But such ease was not in her nature.

"Wait," she whispered as his hand slid up her thigh.

"What is it?"

She swallowed hard.

"Did you sleep with her? That night in the depot, did you fuck her, Thomas?"

He couldn't meet her gaze. She didn't need to hear the answer to know it. She gripped his forearm viciously, trying to draw blood.

"And have you bathed since?" she hissed.

"What?"

"Do not touch me with these soiled hands, brother. Don't you dare. I know you did it. I knew it the moment you came home. She smelled of you. She glowed with it. No doubt there is a bastard swelling in her belly even now."

"She is my wife."

"But you belong to me!"

He stared at her, clear eyes flickering between hers, something close to rage burning in them.

And they heard Edith's screams. Already the poison appeared to be making her delirious, delusional. She was suspicious, for certain. She knew far too much. And she was seeing things, visions haunting her constantly it seemed.

"Go," Lucille said shortly, bringing her knees up to her chest. "See to your wife."

He left without another word. Her thigh burned where he'd touched her, like his hand had been red hot.

Edith... The golden viper in the nest. The halo'd devil.

She had... They had...

Lucille's chest heaved with sobs, the kind she hadn't cried since she was 14 and they had locked her away. So many years. So much love. Such crimes... And for what? For Thomas to waltz off like they were nothing, like she had done nothing for him, had not dedicated her life to him and his wretched inventions, living without even a roof so he could build and build and build...

And yet her heart still clung to him, like a child at the skirts of its mother.

She could feel him slipping from her grasp.

It was obvious. She would have to take Edith from him somehow, separate them. But it would have to be subtle. A gentle poisoning of her mind along with her body.

Yes... She would sow the seeds of doubt in Edith's mind, drive them apart, make Thomas glad when she breathed her last.

It was a case of survival. Edith or her.

Thomas did not come back to bed, but there was evidence of him on the chaise longue in the parlour the next morning, so at least he had not shared his marriage bed either. He could not be outside, for it was yet dark, the pitiful winter sun yet to rise. No doubt he was up in the attic with his machines. Once upon a time, it had been their place, the two of them together, but he had claimed it as his own domain now.

She hesitated over whether to visit him, to see if he would apologise for what he'd done or if he would pretend they had not argued. He did so hate conflict after all, never keen to quarrel. But she couldn't bear to, not yet. She spent her time downstairs, sweeping the leaves from the hallway until she heard Edith moving around, heard her gasp from the landing when she saw who was below her.

"Good morning, Edith. Did you sleep well?"

Dark circles marred her pretty face, her hair loose and beautiful but already showing signs of thinning. She was unwell. Her lips were pale with the lack of blood in them, turned to white petals in place of red. She might faint at any moment and tumble down the stairs.

But no. Somehow it was not enough. Lucille's envy boiled under her skin at the very sight of her. Death was not sufficient for Edith, not her, not this rival to her brother's heart. No, she had to be corrupted first. She had to deserve her death.

"I thought I might take Thomas some tea," Edith said. "It is cold this morning."

Lucille forced a smile.

"No, I don't think we should disturb him just yet. The days grow short and he has to work. Come and sit with me for a while. You are always hidden away in your room to read and write. We can save on coal and be warmer if we are together."

Edith hesitated, her knuckles white against the bannister. She was still in her voluminous robe, her little frame almost drowned by the folds of fabric.

"Of course. I will just dress."

"Let me help you. Your fingers must be frozen standing there. I fear you will not be able to manage the laces."

"There is no need. I can do it."

"It's no hassle."

She climbed the creaking stairs and steered Edith back towards her room, feeling her tremble.

"Poor thing, you are shivering."

And breathing hard, eyes darting left and right like a rabbit caught in a trap.

It would be kinder just to snap her neck, but there was no room for kindness in this house. Not anymore.

 _How was it?_ she wanted to ask as she eased the robe from Edith's shoulders and pulled off her nightgown. _Did you enjoy it? Did you cry out when he entered you and feel as though your body would simply burst? Was he gentle? Did he run his fingers through your hair and over this skin? Did he treat you as a delicate and precious thing? And did you like that? Or do you wish that he'd been rough and forceful, one hand around your throat and the other digging into your flesh?_

_Had you felt such pleasures before, Edith? Alone in your bed, did you learn your body? Or were you an innocent, unaware that such sensations lie at your very fingertips? Did he give you your first climax? Did you fancy that you gave him his? That, at least, you cannot take from me._

_They used to whip me when I cried out Thomas's name when I made myself come. But I knew he was doing the very same thing a hundred miles away and so I couldn't stop. Even apart, we had to share it. When it was cold, I would let my fingers chill to numbness and pretend that it was really him touching me..._

_Do you think your connection is deeper now that he has spilled within you?_

"We are very similar, you and I," she said instead. "Both left motherless so young."

She watched the shivers move across Edith's back as she tried to cover herself quickly. No scars. No evidence of cruelty or pain. She was perfect, the gentle curve of her waist, the dip of her spine before the line of her frilled undergarments. Lucille almost wanted to tear them off, to examine whether she was perfect everywhere, to spin her and see her bared breasts. Was she so pale all over? Would she be embarrassed or brave? There was something achingly lovely about her, something close to tragic in her bearing.

No wonder Thomas wanted her.

"Yes," Edith said. "I imagine we both had to learn to be adults quickly."

"Not merely adults, but women."

A shy smile as Edith got into her corset and tightened her own laces but obediently allowed them to be tied for her.

"Do you think men and women are so different, Lucille?"

She cinched Edith's waist a little more.

"The world seems to think so. Certainly it seems unfair to me that I am forced to rely on Thomas's ventures to survive. I feel that I could have secured capital for the mining engine far better than him if I had been a man. But they would not have listened to me. No doubt he has given you his little speech about the terrible privilege of the baronetcy? He wishes he could have been an engineer instead of a sir." 

"Yes," Edith said, raising her arms to allow the golden silk of her gown to conceal her body even further and turning as they shared the buttoning of it, fingers brushing together. "Though I thought it strange. You live so simply, it's sometimes easy to forget that you are aristocrats."

"And yet we are. And now you are as well, Lady Sharpe."

She looked away, embarrassed, and Lucille reached out to touch her face, tilting her chin back, forcing eye contact.

"I fear the cold does not agree with you, sister," she said. "You seem quite exhausted by it. We should arrange your hair and retreat to somewhere warmer."

"Sister?" Edith breathed.

"Well, yes. By law. Would you prefer I didn't call you that?"

She'd pushed Edith down into the chair before the mirror and took up the brush, easing out the tangles of the night.

"I... I just didn't expect it, that's all. I've never had siblings before."

A few moments passed without speaking, only the soft sounds of the brush and their breathing breaking the silence.

"Are you afraid of me, Edith?"

The girl jerked forward in shock, almost hitting her head on the glass, frightened eyes darting once more.

"Why would I be afraid of you?"

Lucille resumed brushing, as though she was trying to soothe a spooked horse, before separating sections of hair to braid.

"I sometimes fear that you are a little intimidated. That you are not entirely comfortable in my presence. And I confess, it worries me."

She visibly relaxed, the tension in her shoulders and brow lessening.

"It's... It's just quite an adjustment, that's all. You do things differently here. I'm afraid of... of offending you, I suppose. It must be hard to have someone new come into your home."

"Well, I'm sure we will get used to one another in time. I would so dearly like us to be friends."

The smile was clearly forced. Edith was not a good liar. That was a useful thing to know.

"I would like that too."

The door opened behind them as she was putting the finishing touches to the braids, piling them high and pinning them into place.

"What are you doing?"

Thomas was stood in the doorway, his fists clenched and face worried. Lucille spun the final hairpin between her fingers before bringing it down.

"Ow!" Edith cried.

"Did I scratch you? I'm so sorry. Good morning, Thomas. I was just helping Edith with her hair and dress, that's all."

"Are you hurt?" Thomas asked as Edith gingerly pressed a finger to her scalp.

"No," she said. "Not even bleeding. It was just a slip, a little accident. It's nothing."

"Doesn't your wife look well today, Thomas?" Lucille asked. "We were just agreeing that we ought to spend more time in one another's company and get to know each other better, weren't we, Edith?"

"Yes. After all, we are sisters now."

Triumph rolled through Lucille's heart. It turned out Edith was rather simple despite her books and learning. A pretty little doll needing to be broken down and remoulded. The only question was what to do with this new power. What could she make Edith think and do and believe? What would be the easiest... No, the cruelest way to make her cause her own demise? To make her crush Thomas's heart, to shatter her own innocence, to mar her own perfection? How exactly would she ensure her fall?

Lucille had tasted bitterness for far too long. Surely she deserved a little of the honey of revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a vague idea of where this is going, but I really wanted to get some of it out of my head before doing any proper planning.
> 
> As indicated in the tags, there will be Edith/Lucille, probably of a dubious nature (at least at first) maybe leading to threesomes?
> 
> Please let me know what you think and thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Thomas clearly wanted to stay with them after they ate an early lunch, suspicious of her new particular interest in Edith, but the men were here to work on his machine and he couldn't very well leave them to their own devices. Certainly not with the wages he insisted on paying. It seemed everyone in the county would eat handsomely this winter while they scrimped and saved and starved as usual. And what would Edith be then but another mouth to feed? Assuming she even made it that long.

The door to the parlour was habitually kept open to allow air to circulate, a fruitless attempt to prevent the spread of damp that stained the walls. However, in the interests of keeping the draughts out, Lucille heaved it closed. The wind howled down the chimney and stoked the pathetic fire that already was at risk of burning out in the grate.

And yet it was warmer in here than in the rest of the house. Just. Edith still clung to a blanket, her precious manuscript in front of her as she made the occasional correction or change. Thomas had read the whole thing and seemed to believe it some kind of masterpiece. Ghosts and spirits. As if Edith knew what it was to be haunted by the past.

For a long while, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the scratching of their pens. It was almost peaceful.

But Lucille didn't want peace. She wanted to scream and rage, to add her voice to the wind's, to let the whole world know how she had been wronged, how a cuckoo had entered into her nest and was stealing what was rightfully hers.

"Edith, dear, is there wax near you? Could you bring it for me, please? I have some letters to seal."

The girl obediently found the little dish of mostly recycled wax and carried it down from the upper level, visibly unsure at having been summoned so suddenly.

"So many letters," she said as Lucille began steadily sealing them all.

"Business proposals. All over the country, Europe, America. We have to make money somehow."

"Thomas lets you write his business letters for him?"

"Thomas wouldn't know where to begin to write them himself. I found all his contacts, everyone he's ever gone to beg money from. I have to do something, otherwise he'd build and build and build and we would all starve. I'm writing to the owners of other clay mines to see if they would pay for a patent license for the engine."

"Will he appreciate that? Selling his great idea?"

Lucille looked up at her sharply, more sharply than she meant to. Edith flinched and fluttered, like a little butterfly.

As a child, Lucille had torn the wings and legs and _eyes_ from butterflies.

"I... Of course, you will have discussed it between the two of you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like I doubted your decision."

Anger subsiding slightly, she stabbed the seal into the final block of wax. Mine owners. Rich men, men who would trust them since they were in the same industry, daughters with stupid open hearts and empty brains and deep, deep pockets who would rush into marriage as quickly as they fell into their graves.

_I'm sowing, Edith. Can't you see? These are the seeds from where I shall reap your replacements. They will wear your ring and sleep in your bed. They will bear your name and call your husband theirs. But they will all be wrong... My ring, my bed, my name, my brother. And though I doubt any of them will earn my hate so thoroughly as you have, it will be as if you were never here. He will forget all about you, like he forgot all the others._

"Come," she said. "It's nearly four. It will be dusk soon. If we start the water heating, we can give the men a hot drink before they go home."

"The local tea?" Edith asked, a little hint of worry in her voice.

"No, that's only for family. It's difficult to get in large amounts. We have cheap tea specifically for this purpose in the pantry."

The air from the hall was bitingly cold. It gave Edith's cheeks a charming glow despite the general sickly look she bore.

"Why do you keep the pantry locked?" she asked as Lucille calmly opened the oversized cupboard.

"Oh, habit," she lied. "We had a thieving maid once, when I was young. It started then. Of course such days are long behind us now. I suppose we have only the dog to keep out. It must be quite an adjustment for you to suddenly be without help."

"I can manage."

There was a little pout there, the kind of thing certain men found irresistible. The kind of look she wore herself sometimes when the occasion arose. In the right hands, it was a weapon, but Edith seemed blissfully unaware that she was doing it. Would it be better if she did? Lucille wondered if she might like Edith better if she had a conniving bone in her body.

They made the tea together, Edith mostly following directions, coming close once or twice to burning herself on the huge pan they were using. There wasn't a teapot big enough in the world.

"Is there enough milk, do you think?"

"They'll take it black. Go, tell them it's ready."

She really was childlike, rushing off to fetch the visitors, strange, rough men who carried their hats respectfully in knarled hands, bowing to Lucille as they entered the kitchen. The were reverent to her, but they smiled at Edith. They liked _her,_ so pretty and sweet and freshly married, not the sad spinster still living in her brother's house.

Her house, really. She'd been the one who made sure it came to them. She was the one who kept it functioning as best she could.

"Edith, would you like to do the honours?" she asked, offering her a large ladle. "You did make it almost by yourself after all."

Silly, simpering thing, so keen to play at being useful, trying to learn the name of each man who proffered his tin mug at her for over-stewed tea. And yet they'd drink it like it was water turned to wine because of who had made it.

Her jealousy had almost become an unnoticed aspect of life, like the sound of the wind or the cold, but she felt it flare now. How stupid. She scolded herself. Why did she care that these strangers preferred Edith to her? They were nothing. Only one man's opinion mattered after all.

"Thomas, would you come with me for a moment? There's an address I want you to check."

She knew he would follow and strode to the parlour, the heat of the fire almost gone, pushing him to the wall immediately to kiss him, to reclaim her territory. She almost felt like she could taste Edith on him, something sickly like medicine, and it made her more determined even as he pushed her back.

"Not now," he hissed, clutching her wrists. "We could be seen."

She jerked a hand free and clasped it to his neck desperately, making him look at her.

"Tonight," she whispered. "Please. I need you."

He nodded, and without even a flicker of hesitation. Perhaps he wasn't lying, perhaps she had nothing to fear from her new rival. She forced her way back to his mouth, only stopping when he nipped her flesh harshly between his teeth, both of them panting as they broke apart.

Raising a hand to her face, she found blood. Just a little, but still.

"I'm sorry," Thomas said softly. "I'm sorry. Will you be able to hide that?"

She pressed her bloody finger to his mouth to stop his words, sighing with contentment when he sucked on it just a little, tasting the very essence of her.

"The cold makes my lips crack," Lucille said, her eyes fixed to his face, reading from an invisible script. "It's nothing. Just the cold."

He still seemed upset at having accidentally hurt her and pulled her close, wrapping both arms around her.

"Tonight," he agreed, murmuring it into her ear. "I promise."

She sometimes asked herself where it had all begun, this need, this burning ache that only knew the soothing of her brother's love. She could not, or would not, recall a life before Thomas was born, though she remembered him as an infant. So quiet. He had learned as early as she had that making noise only made it worse.

It was strange, now she thought of their childhood. It seemed like they had barely known their father, just the shout of his voice, the strike of his belt. And Mother, well, she had wanted nothing to do with them except to show off to visitors, to pretend they were the perfect family. Lucille used to spit and scream like a trapped wildcat whenever this happened, whenever they tried to make her smile and sing for strangers. The beatings afterwards were worth it, even though Thomas would weep and beg her not to do it again. He couldn't bear to see her hurt, not then in any case. Perhaps he was used to it now.

The nursery would creak and groan as they played with whatever they could find, Thomas learning to make toys with his bare hands and she making up songs and stories for him. In a house that contained only shadows and hurt, what else were they to do but build their own worlds? What else but learn to love each other when it was clear no-one else would?

The kissing had started when they were very young, innocent pecks to cheeks and lips and any part of the body that hurt. Everyone in stories seemed to kiss, so why not them? And in another life, perhaps it would have stayed that way. Childish, chaste, the simple kiss of a prince to wake his sleeping beauty.

Of course, there were aspects of fairytales that she despised. All these children cursed with wicked stepmothers. How severely cursed must she and Thomas have been to have been born to a whole wicked family.

They used to dream of being Hänsel and Gretel, taken and abandoned in the forest. Free at last, just the two of them. And Thomas would ask for that version, so she would tell it, the tale of Thomas and Lucille, bravely vanquishing the evil hag and finding their fortune, coming back to claim the house and lands as their own while the villagers cheered. And he would grin and kiss her mouth, for obviously it was from there that stories came and so he loved it.

Lucille paused in front of the dirty hall mirror, a fresh set of doomed moths fallen before it, while Thomas returned to the kitchen. The bite was barely a smudge. No-one would notice. Not while they were gazing at Edith certainly.

He smoothed her hair a little, not that it had been so much as mussed by Thomas's hands.

Gretel. How she had longed to be Gretel, to be out in the world with her brother where none could hurt them.

So why did the witch gaze back at her from the mirror?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, er... This chapter contains memories of very underage goings on and also menstruation. It's deliberately unpleasant. Please be aware and stay away if this could distress you. There shouldn't be anything plot-wise that you can't gather from later chapters if you want to skip this one.

It was fun to watch Edith flitting about in the evening, the candles making her look almost healthy. She was smiling and animated, buoyed by so much human contact that afternoon. She took a little too much port and had a light flush to her cheeks, all soft eyes for Thomas and what she no doubt thought were subtle touches to his arm and knee.

Poor little fool.

_You think you've won him from me? You think yourself mistress of his heart? He's mine. Always has been, always will be. One moment's weakness cannot threaten us._

And she was sure that's what it had been. A moment's lack of strength that made him succumb to Edith's charms. Thomas had attacks of cowardice from time to time after all, moments where he would turn away and she would have to deal with whatever upset him. Even as children it had been so. A dead bird falling from the rafters. A row echoing up the stairs. A nightmare... He was forever running though the house at night and into her room, seeking comfort.

And he had caught her... And that's when it started, really. Because he was too curious and she was too reckless.

She'd been eleven, beginning to feel alone more than ever, unsure of the body that was beginning to grow around her. A body that seemed ungainly and complex, a body that made her feel different to everything and everyone, a body that bled.

She could remember the fear, waking up to bloodied sheets and with a sick horror in her stomach. She was dying, surely. Who would protect Thomas from the world's cruelty now?

How she had wept, bawled, until Mother found her. And there was no scolding. No strike to correct her behaviour. No vowing that Father would punish her as soon as he was back from Europe. Just a solemn explanation that such was a woman's lot and she ought to learn to bear it. Hide it. Never speak of it to anyone. Least of all Thomas for he was yet too young to know such things.

A few months later, she discovered that the place between her legs was capable of more than bleeding. She'd found the book by mistake, trying to sneak a new story up to the attic in the night. She was always careful to read anything new herself before exposing Thomas to it, for fear of distressing him. Even now, she would read his correspondence so she could decide for herself the best course of action. She had thought the story was something innocent, the tale of a young woman going to London to seek her fortune. They had read many such books. But this was not at all what she had expected. The words, the descriptions, the truths that were revealed to her. That men's bodies were capable of such strange things. That men and women's bodies met, came together in ways her heart shrank from thinking of. Did husbands and wives really commit such acts together? Did Mother and Father?

The idea sickened her in a way she could not explain, the words of this young woman describing a body like her own and the way men appraised and touched it. She did not want that. It was too frightening.

But she described other sensations too, a sort of hunger which Lucille recognised, a peculiar almost burning feeling and the means by which she might ease it by herself.

At church, they talked about the Virgin birth and she had never fully understood. "Joseph had not known her before the child was born," that's what they said. Now she thought she could guess the meaning.

She'd hidden the book beneath the bed, perhaps only a sixth of it read, and tried to know herself.

It hurt, at first, just as the girl in the book described. Her fingers did not seem suited to go inside, her body didn't seem right. But a little higher... There she found something she had not read about, or at least not in so many words. A secret thing that was only hers, a magic that she possessed. And it was good. Addictive. And somehow she knew she should not mention her discovery to anyone, possibly not ever.

And yet, she did.

She'd thought Thomas was asleep, having snuck into her bed. Really, at nine years old, he ought to have grown out of needing comfort from nightmares. But he was lying next to her, and though she thought she oughtn't touch herself in his presence, she found it calmed her enough to let her drift into slumber without the nagging worries of life and so she wanted just a little...

Her hand slid under her nightgown, bunching it up, one leg slightly bent for access. Already she was wet, her body knowing her purpose, easing the way for her rubbing fingers. She sighed gently to herself, little circles against that sensitive nub of flesh, warm pleasure rushing through her...

"What are you doing?"

She started at his whisper.

"Nothing," she hissed. "Go back to sleep."

"No, what are you doing? You're breathing funny. Like you're sick."

"I am not!"

And yet she was breathless, her heart hammering, excited to have been caught somehow. Thomas's little child jaw clenched with determination, yanking the blankets away. She didn't even try to stop him or to hide from his stare at where her hand was disappearing under her night clothes.

"What are you doing?" he asked again.

She shrugged. She had not known the words back then. Masturbation, onanism, even now it seemed to her that these were male words, somehow not meant for her. Women's pleasure was a nameless thing. A secret.

"It feels nice," was all she said, letting him push her gown upwards until she was exposed entirely.

He looked at her almost critically. Had he even known how different they would look beneath their clothes? Did he remember bathing together as when they were smaller, laughing at how strange their bodies were to one another's before it was suddenly forbidden? Was it the hair that perplexed him? After all, he had never seen that before.

"Can I touch?" he asked.

She shouldn't allow this, but part of her suddenly wanted it, wanted them to be bound together even more than they already were. Her blood was so loud in her ears as she nodded, the feeling of his tiny fingers like a touch from a hot poker, making her pant and squirm.

"Keep going," she whispered. "Please, keep going."

She had read words describing this feeling - the critical point, the crucial ecstasy, - but was unsure what exactly they meant. But as her brother rubbed at her, she felt it coming, a strange rush through her body that made her gasp sharply, her muscles shuddering as more pleasure than she had ever known by herself burst inside her. She almost didn't notice Thomas's wide, frightened eyes, afraid that he had hurt her based on that reaction no doubt. She pulled him close, his fingers sticky with her juices, and covered him in kisses as a reward, whispering that he had done so well, that it had felt so good.

And she had felt guilty. Guilty that she could not show him this pleasure in return. She tried, but he was too young still.

"You mustn't tell anyone, Thomas," she'd said afterwards, very serious. "No-one at all. They will punish us for it."

"Why? Is it wrong?"

"No. No, it's not wrong, but it is secret. A secret game that only people who love each other play. And part of the game is keeping it secret from all others. You mustn't ever tell."

He grew to like it. He started to come to her bed expressly to please her, enjoying the praise and kisses she would give him afterwards.

He still liked to be praised even now, with the same hunger of a small boy who had received far too few kind words while growing up.

Edith was sleepy, her eyelids drooping and head nodding. The drink really had hit her hard.

"I'll take her to bed," Lucille said, the third time she'd drifted off on Thomas's shoulder. 

Such a simple gesture, but it was laced with comfort and intimacy and so it made her rage internally, pulling Edith to her feet a little roughly, jerking her awake.

"You are exhausted, sister. It's time to retire, I think."

"Thomas?"

He kissed her on the cheek, eyes low, the barest minimum level of affection.

"I'm just dampening the fire. Go up. I'll join you soon."

Edith smiled knowingly and Lucille wanted to slap her then and there, wanted to claw out her eyes for daring to look upon him, wanted to dash her head against the wall. But instead she simply eased her out of the room and up the stairs towards her chamber.

She tottered a little and Lucille carefully guided her to the bed, beginning to undo the ties and laces on her clothes.

"I can manage. Don't, I can manage..."

Lucille ignored her, steadily undressing her and reaching for the nightgown. Her eyes flicked down Edith's body, so smooth and soft, her fingers skimming over perfect skin, shivers passing through her. She had such delicate nipples, small and pink, the cold making them stand out from her body.

She glanced up at her face, finding her eyes darkened by drinking, her lips stained with it, like she'd painted them. A faint look of... Of what? Fear? Not quite.

More like anticipation.

"Arms up," Lucille said, covering her nakedness beneath swathes of cloth and easing her under the blanket before draping her clothes over the back of the chair.

"Thank you," Edith mumbled, her eyes closed already, sleep beginning to take hold.

Lucille paused in the doorway, looking back at her. How peaceful she seemed, how harmless... And yet somehow she was the greatest threat that she and Thomas had faced since Mother. And she had no idea. No knowledge of the stress she was causing.

"Good night."

She closed the door silently and met Thomas at the top of the stairs.

"Is something the matter?" he asked. "You seem strange."

She shook her head, trying to push the doubt from her mind.

"Nothing's wrong. Just needing you, that's all."

He smiled and took her hand, pressing his lips to her knuckles before leading her towards the bedroom. Her bedroom. The same room that they'd been in the first time he'd lain with her, both so unsure and yet so certain. How proud she'd been to feel him spill and known that she had done it. She had finally repaid him for that pleasure he had gifted to her three years earlier. Her Thomas. Always and completely hers.

And no beautiful young American was going to come between them.

No-one could ever take him from her. She would rather die than be alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Lucille is reading is meant to be Fanny Hill, an erotic novel from the 1740s that was actually banned in the UK until the 1960s (and some parts even to the 80s apparently) but 'pirate' copies did the rounds so I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that a Sharpe ancestor had one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the start of this chapter, I would just like to bring your attention to the graphic violence warning above. 
> 
> Thank you!

He wasn't going to mention Edith, that much was clear, so neither would she. Sometimes it was difficult, as a confrontational person, to find that Thomas would give up a fight so easily, but sometimes she was glad that he would bend to her will with the minimum of fuss.

They kissed as the door clicked shut behind them, desperate and needy, his fingers struggling with the ties of her dress and the pins in her hair, her hands flying over buttons. Even when there was no rush, they were like this. Old habits die hard.

The first touch of his hand to bare flesh had her gasping, the feeling of his skin against her waist, so warm and soft and sure. Their clothes fell to the floor unheeded, the bed still unmade as she had left it that morning.

His lips fixed to her neck, like he was trying to gain nourishment from her veins, allowing himself to be pushed backwards towards the mattress, pulling her down with him.

She could feel him, hard against her flesh, but he knew what she needed. He always knew.

One hand stroked her body, up from her thigh and over the curve of her hip, her ribs not quite at the sharpest they'd ever been. A simple, gentle touch, accepting everything, the scars, the sin...

He ran the fingers of his other hand through her hair, untangling the remains of that day's braids until they fell down her back, hissing when she tired of this gentle treatment and sank her nails into his chest. She wasn't supposed to mark him when he was married, just in case. Scratches and love bites were difficult to explain away.

"No," he said gently, rolling them and pinning her wrists at either side of her head, out of range.

_"No..." they'd heard from the doorway, both their heads snapping to look. She was two months short of fifteen, their father dead last winter and the house in disarray, closer to Thomas than ever before now they were truly alone with their mother._

_Their mother who was standing there, mouth open in shock at finding her children so entwined, the surprise soon turning to rage as she advanced into the room and they hurried to cover themselves._

_"What have you done? Lucille, what have you done?"_

"Lucille..."

His moan brought her back, her wrists loose and his hands roaming once more, lips moving down her neck and over her collar bone, towards her breasts. She could feel his breath against her skin, his kisses mingling with sighs as he explored her body.

_It wasn't her fault. The way that Mother grabbed her made her do it, dragging her by the hair while Thomas begged for mercy and tried to take the blame, but Mother knew. Perhaps she'd always known what Lucille herself was certain of, that she was the problem, the trouble, the curse. She'd stopped fighting her nature long ago._

_And as she struggled to be free, her naked legs hitting against the landing walls as she kicked out, managing to stand, twisting and shoving and hearing the cry of shock as Mother fell, the sickening crunch as she hit the midpoint of the staircase, the scream and Thomas's look of terror as he joined her at the scene, his mouth a perfect circle..._

"Oh..."

She arched upwards as he pushed in, their bodies meeting as they were surely built to do, desperate kisses softening their gasps and moans.

Her thighs locked around his hips, canting upwards to meet his every motion, their own rhythm in perfect synchronicity.

His fingers dug into her skin, holding her safe and steady and wanted, eyes burning with desire as he angled one hand in towards where she needed it and gently crying out at the answering clench of her body.

_Mother's leg had never really healed from the break she'd suffered the previous summer, the break that she insisted was accidental, like they hadn't heard the argument, the hits, the screaming. Lucille had had to look after her virtually single-handedly when she couldn't walk. And now her leg was snapped again, as though proof of how ineffective her care had been. It was far worse this time. She was bleeding, the broken bone bursting from her wrinkled skin like a dead branch from a snow drift, varicose veins throbbing like snakes and so much red..._

_"We should move her," Thomas said uncertainly. "We should put her to bed and get a doctor."_

_Lucille walked calmly back to her room to pull on a nightgown and descended the stairs, checking for how bad the damage was. And Mother shrieked and struggled at her approach, calling her demon and monster, badges that Lucille would take to her heart and wear proudly. What good had fighting it ever done her? If she was a monster, she'd show them all just how monstrous she could be._

_The slap across her face would have done no damage if not for the red ring, which caught her and sliced a scar into her lip, the tang of blood filling her mouth._

She moaned out, unable to hold it back as Thomas's practised fingers found the magic place, teasing her flesh in time with his thrusts while she fisted her hands desperately in the sheets, wishing that she gripped his body instead.

_They went outside in the half-light to discuss what ought to be done, wearing their night clothes for a little warmth._

_"If we fetch a doctor, she will tell," Lucille said. "And they'll separate us. Is that what you want to happen?"_

_"No. But we can't just leave her lying there. She'll tell someone eventually. We have to stop her."_

_He claimed afterwards that he didn't, but he did, Lucille saw his eyes flick over to the axe where it lay ready to chop the wood of the few trees they had left and then back to her and she knew what he was thinking._

_He barely even tried to stop her as she took it and walked back inside, a strange peace falling over her as Mother saw the weapon and began to scream._

_"You're mad! Both of you, you're mad!"_

"You're perfect," he breathed against her lips, his motions faltering as he grew close but determined to finish her first, her body beginning to shudder...

_..and twitch, long after she was dead, the blood running down her face and dripping from the matted hair that surrounded the strange, pulpy, ruined flesh beneath the cleaving of her skull, the image of her spattered brain burned into Lucille's mind, the stains from it on her hands and face and sprayed upon her nightgown..._

"Thomas..."

"Yes, sister..."

Her chest jerked upwards, yanked by an invisible thread, her breath coming in sharp gasps as she climaxed, her hands...

_..so cold as Lucille pulled the red ring off to claim it for her own, to claim it all, the house, the title, Thomas, everything._

_"Get her jewellery while I change," she said, in a calm tone that did not match the excitement rushing through her every cell. "We'll dump it on the road. A man did this, a stranger, a thief vanished into the night, do you understand?"_

_And he had kissed her, not even caring for the blood that marked his face when he drew back._

His lips were always so warm and pliant, especially when he held her close like this, soothing with caresses as her body grew steady once more, the unmistakable sensation of mutual pleasure between her thighs.

"Did I hurt you?" he murmured.

"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."

"You're crying."

And yes, she was. Slow, deep tears were welling out of her, as though her head was full of water and beginning to overflow. Her left hand ached. 

"I'm tired, that's all."

He didn't believe her, that much was obvious, but obediently held her against his chest for a long time, until she pushed away and tugged on her nightgown, ready to hide herself once more.

A few deep breaths put paid to her tears as usual before she lay back into his arms, the only place she had ever felt secure.

Too many old memories were being stirred up. Too much emotion sloshing around the house like the spring snowmelt in the hall.

The sooner Edith was corrupted and gone, the better. It was surely her doing, disturbing the dust that had lain so unmoved for years.

Lucille closed her eyes and tried to focus on the sound of Thomas's heartbeat beneath her ear and ignore the echoing screams of her mother, still swirling in her head despite how many years had passed.

Edith wasn't the only one to know a ghost when she met one.


	5. Chapter 5

Paradoxically, Edith seemed thoroughly exhausted the next day, though they had not heard her moving around in the night as she did so often. She was practically swaying and Lucille felt obliged to insist that she lie on the chaise for a while and rest.

Perhaps the tea was having a stronger effect than anticipated. She was young and slight after all. The dose might be too high to be subtle. That said, though she coughed sometimes, it was not the deep, wet, hacking sound that came just before death, so perhaps not. Maybe the amount ought to be lessened though, just in case. It would not do to let her wither without signing over her money after all.

"Lucille..."

Even her voice was pitiful today. Looking up from the most recent stock reports from London, checking on the price of clay, Lucille found herself being looked at, a little golden head gazing at her from beneath a thick blanket.

"Do you need something?"

And now she faltered, looking away.

"No, it's nothing."

Holding in a sigh, Lucille approached her, motioning her to sit up and then easing her back down, head now in her lap. Edith's hair contrasted quite beautifully with the deep blue of her gown, still loose this morning, ready to be carded through and stroked soothingly.

"Is there something the matter, Edith?" she asked, voice low. "You know that you can talk to me about anything."

Edith's eyes had closed again, her mouth open just slightly and her chest rising and falling rapidly.

"When I wake in the night, Thomas is never there," she said softly. "And I'm... I'm worried that he regrets how quickly..."

"Hush. My brother suffers quite terribly from a kind of sleepless sickness that means he is often awake for hours later than he means to be. He wouldn't want to disturb you with his restlessness, so no doubt he comes down here or goes to a guest room. You mustn't fret if he cannot always sleep beside you."

A huff of a sigh, edged with annoyance or frustration.

"If it were only sleeping, I might... Er..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Frustration, then. The poor girl was flushed bright red, no doubt scolding herself internally for having mentioned such a private matter in front of her sister-in-law.

And Lucille knew she ought to be annoyed, shocked perhaps, but her heart was light and dancing at the thought that for once, she was the one at an advantage. She was the only one with a real claim on Thomas's affections so it was only right that she had them while Edith starved for love.

"He is new to being married. It's a big adjustment. You mustn't judge him too harshly."

A little frown appeared between Edith's brows, a slight puzzlement.

"Are you a widow, Lucille?"

That hadn't been a question she expected, not at all.

"What makes you ask that?"

"Just you are so wise when it comes to men. I wondered if perhaps you had been married."

_Our connection is far deeper than mere marriage. He is the other part of my soul. Half of my beating heart. Nothing that can be tied down to signatures in a church record._

"Wise?" she said instead, affecting a chuckle. "Such high praise, Edith. No, I was never married, though not, I like to flatter myself, for want of chances."

_At one time, they'd thought she could lure wealth to the house, rich men, older ones with money whose deaths would seem unlucky rather than strange, but that plan was quickly abandoned. After all, a man would take what he wanted on the wedding night. A husband's right, a wife's duty. It would be vastly easier for Thomas to refuse his spouse's attentions than for her. Or at least, so they had thought._

"You must have had many proposals," Edith said, in a voice that promised sincerity. "After all you are clever and know how to run a whole house and about business and music and books. But they would probably want you to leave Allerdale Hall and I don't think you'd want to. It's your home."

She was a little taken aback. Edith knew nothing of her, nothing at all surely, and yet here she was, reciting such perfect truths. It was frightening to know she was so perceptive.

"I had to fight for this house," Lucille said. "It's important to me."

A pause of a few moments.

"What happened? After your mother... passed?"

Lucille concentrated on the motions of her fingers, easing the tension from Edith's temples even if she couldn't deal with her own so easily.

"They sent Thomas and I to school. Separate ones. Though he was likely to have been sent to board anyway, even if she had still been with us. Such is the luck of noble young men."

The memory of the separation pained her even now, despite the time that had passed. And, of course, her own 'schooling' had not been exactly as expected.

"We spent much of our teenage years apart, the estate in trust for Thomas, and slowly rotting. The solicitors wanted to sell it when he came of age, pay off the rest of Father's debts, but I wouldn't let them. This is our home and the home of our ancestors. We can't just let it go, not without a fight. So instead we sold as much clay as possible, until the mines were depleted and now... Well, now. So we flit from city to city, begging for capital. But Allerdale remains and I'd be lying if I said I was sorry for it. I wouldn't trade the house for all the money in the world, even if it is falling apart."

Why was she telling Edith this? She didn't need to know. If one of her predecessors had tried to pry, Lucille would have sent them away wincing at the sting of her tongue, not sat with them so comfortably. But somehow it felt good to say these things. It felt good to let out a facsimile of the truth.

When was the last time she had spoken to someone? Really spoken, let out real things and not been trying to bend a will or sweeten a prospect or lying and lying and lying...

Had she ever spoken openly to anyone except her brother?

"I remember coming home finally at twenty years old, nearly six years since I had last been here, and finding that the roof had caved in. How I wept. We need a new source of income and until we have it, we cannot begin to mend things. We can only try to hold back the spread of decay. But making money costs money, and we struggle to find enough."

Edith's eyes had opened and she stared blankly straight ahead, her mouth opening and closing as if she couldn't quite find the words to get out.

"I... I have some money," she said. "My inheritance from my father and the sale of the house and furniture in New York hasn't come through yet. We could..."

"This, I feel, is something you should discuss with Thomas, not with me. It's your business."

Edith sat up, hair tumbling back into place down her back.

"But it is yours too," she insisted. "You run the house and most of the mining concern. You ought to know what's going on. After all, you've been involved with the machine and the house far longer than me and it's your future as well."

Such an impassioned speech, Lucille was quite taken aback by it. She blinked, trying to choose what to say next. Ought she agree? She could have the Cushing money safely secured early and then Edith's death would be a moot point, a technicality to be completed at a later date. Or should she refuse again, make Edith really talk her into the idea. Talk her into killing her.

She reached out and stroked her cheek, smiling softly.

"We still shouldn't discuss it without him. Bring it up at dinner."

Not that Edith had a chance. Thomas announced that he wouldn't be staying for dinner, having been invited to dine with his engineers in the village public house and that he would return in the morning rather than risk the journey in the dark. It would be rude to refuse, he said.

"Should I come with you?" Edith asked. "I could change into something more suitable."

Lucille's nostrils flared, her temper barely under control in her breast at even the thought of them spending another night together, leaving her all alone in the house with just the screaming...

Spending a night with no-one in the house but Edith was hardly ideal either, but it was vastly preferable to the alternative.

"Sorry," Thomas said. "No wives allowed."

"Though what the men might say that could shock a married woman, I'm sure I couldn't begin to imagine," Lucille said, just to see the pain in Thomas's face as he looked away and the flush on Edith's cheeks.

The women's eyes met, a little smile on Edith's face, amused despite her embarrassment, and Lucille found herself laughing, bright and spirited and quite unlike her normal way. Thomas glanced from one to the other almost nervously, unsure what was going on between them.

And his eyes fixed on her, a faint expression of surprise and a little reproach and...

He was _jealous._ Jealous that they were sharing a joke that he didn't understand. Annoyed, perhaps, that her life did not necessarily revolve around him all the time. That she had clearly been talking rather intimately with his wife.

She raised her eyebrows at him, communicating silently that he had no leg to stand on, quite frankly, when it came to intimacy with Edith. 

"Oh, I'm sure we will stay up half the night talking," she said, prodding the wound, voice almost giddy. "I had not realised quite how much I missed female company." 

And, oh, Edith beamed at that. delighted to have been pleasing, to be wanted. Her smile was like the sun emerging from behind fog. It was... unexpectedly pleasant. 

Which was a deeply unnerving thought. Lucille shook herself internally, reminding herself that this was the means to an end. She was merely lulling Edith into trusting her, into relying upon her, so she wouldn't notice death hanging over her shoulder. 

She was the moth and Edith the butterfly. They might fly and roost together, but they were still predator and prey. But perhaps she was more inclined to play with Edith than she had been with any of the others. 

Was Edith really any more interesting than her predecessors? Or was it just Thomas's attention that made Lucille determined to know her better? What was it about her that made him weaker than usual? What did Edith have that she didn't? What secrets did she possess?

Surely it couldn't take long to find out. Anything Edith could provide, she could too. He'd see. It was for his own good after all.


	6. Chapter 6

They couldn't stay up, in fact. Edith was quite exhausted, yawning through dinner, her dainty hands pressed to her mouth to try to hide it.

The wind was strong as Lucille climbed the stairs, moonlight flooding through the roof and catching the swirling dust and leaves. She felt a certain degree of trepidation, going to bed alone. The night that Thomas and Edith had spent at the post office had been the worst she'd experienced since their reunion.

_"He'll come for me," she used to say to the strange, silent young women who drifted around her in her captivity, the girls whose spirits had been ground to dust and now worked as servants for their tormentors. Rehabilitation, they called it. "My brother will fetch me."_

_A mantra, a prayer for six years, until the day he arrived, his face so frightened to find her there, so thin and sick. He had to pay a great deal for her liberty. She didn't believe he had thought twice about it._

_"I'm not broken," she'd whispered. "They couldn't break me."_

_Not that they hadn't tried. The beatings, the burnings, the scars on scars that cross-crossed her skin now, all these things they had inflicted on her had failed. She was rather proud of it._

_"You're too strong for that."_

_And he had taken her home, to the house they had left, so broken and rotten but theirs, their very own now. And she had cried, but mostly from relief. These were her walls. Her ceilings, her floors. Her Thomas. Everything was right._

_She hadn't wanted to show herself to him. Her back was not the only place on her with marks now. They were on her chest and stomach and legs, anywhere that clothes would hide, where they'd tried to strike the evil out of her. She was so different to how he had last seen her._

_But Thomas had changed too. He was a man now, tall and strong and as he touched her with reverent fingers, she'd melted. She had almost forgotten what gentleness felt like. She'd forgotten what it was to feel safe._

She must have slept, for when she woke, someone was calling her name. She pulled the blankets up over her head, like a child against the monsters of the night.

"You're dead," she murmured into the pillow. "I killed you. You're dead. Go away."

_Mother had never really left her alone. Almost every night, she heard the screams again. And now she had companions, the awful coughing and wailing of Thomas's wives, the crying of the baby, and that was the worst, that's why she killed them before they were born now, before they lived, making two lots of meals the night before so she could spend the whole day in the bath, drinking her pennyroyal tea and bleeding and bleeding and bleeding so Thomas wouldn't see and wouldn't know of the choices she made on his behalf because they had to be made for everyone's sake, especially the little unborn monsters who didn't deserve the pain of living..._

"Lucille!"

A new voice.

Edith.

Could she have died so soon?

Getting up and pulling her dressing gown tightly around herself, Lucille rushed down the stairs to meet her current sister-in-law, who was petrified and trembling and very much alive.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"Can't you hear that?" Edith quavered, the candles she held sputtering. "Down the corridor, I saw them again. The ghosts. I know I did."

Lucille set her jaw and place a hand on Edith's shoulder, forcing her to turn and listen.

"You are very tired. You're having bad dreams, that's all."

"No. No, look! There. Can't you see it?"

She obediently gazed down the narrow corridor where Edith was pointing with a shaking hand.

"There's nothing there," she lied. "Now go back to bed. You'll feel better in the morning."

"Will you stay with me?" Edith blurted as she turned away. "Please, Lucille, I'm so afraid and Thomas is not here..."

She hesitated. But if she was going to have any chance of sleeping tonight, maybe this was it. Otherwise surely Edith would keep her awake with her frightened wailing.

And it would be warmer to share a bed.

"Very well," she said. "If it will make you feel better."

She followed through into the bedroom, the master bedroom, the room where Father and Mother and all the wives had slept. Her being here felt wrong, like an insult to all of them. As she settled in beneath the blankets, Edith rolled close to lay a brief kiss against her cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered.

The little spot burned, like she'd been branded, like Edith's lips were hot coals.

Some time in the night, Edith's hand wrapped around her wrist as though taking her pulse. As though desperate for the touch of someone living.

It was an urge she knew well. In spite of herself, she twisted her hand to mirror it.

_I am here and I am alive._

She woke only once that night, finding Edith curled up against her, looking so small and delicate. So beautiful and peaceful.

She'd be a very handsome corpse.

The next thing she knew was Thomas's voice.

"Good morning," he said as her eyes flickered open. "Or nearly good afternoon."

Edith rolled away to get up, the residual warmth of her very pleasant.

"Is it late?" she asked, pulling on her dressing gown. "Oh, dear. I've just been so tired, I think it finally caught up with me. Trouble sleeping and then Lucille..."

"She needed company, brother," Lucille said. "Even one night is too long for her to spend without you."

He smiled, but it was clearly false to the practised eye.

"I'm going to take a bath," Edith said, slipping out of the room.

In a flash, Thomas was by her side, in the space that Edith had so recently vacated, and kissing her insistently.

"Stop," Lucille hissed. "What if she's forgotten something and comes back?"

"Am I forbidden to kiss my sister hello?"

"That was no simple hello. What's got your blood hot?"

He stared at her for a moment and then looked away.

"Nothing, just... You've never shared a bed with someone else. The sight of you together, it... I don't know. It's strange. I don't understand."

Now it was her turn to stare and then scoff.

"She was seeing ghosts again and making the most awful racket and she begged me to stay in the bed with her, so I did. There's nothing else to it."

"You wouldn't have done such a thing for Enola."

Huffing angrily, Lucille dragged herself out of bed, roughly tugging Edith's hairbrush through her own tresses and leaving several dark strands behind.

"Thomas, what colour were Enola's eyes?"

"I don't see what...?"

"Brown. They were brown. I'm not surprised that you don't remember. I'm the one who has to spend time with them, listening to their nonsense and feeding them tea after tea after tea. I happen to find Edith a little more tolerable than the others so I indulged her."

"Liar."

She was tempted to hit him for that. He was the one who had broken their vows. Not church vows admittedly, but the whispered and unspoken promises that passed between two people who were each other's everything. She had done nothing wrong. She'd just been trying to sleep.

Instead she yanked him forward to bruise his lips with a kiss.

"We've been strained lately," she said softly. "The engine for you, the delays, the legal issues, winter approaching. I'm sorry for snapping at you."

His fingers tangled briefly in her hair.

"I'm sorry too. I don't even know what I'm accusing you of."

And that was a lie. He was accusing her of being... improper with Edith. That much was obvious, but there were two other questions that were more important and more pressing.

Firstly, whether he was jealous that she had been intimate with Edith or that Edith had been intimate with her. Which of them did he consider his exclusively? Both, perhaps?

And secondly, just how much and how easily would he come to hate Edith if such a thing were really to happen?


	7. Chapter 7

It made her laugh at herself. It was a truly ridiculous plan. Seduce Edith and provoke Thomas's jealousy until he was quite mad with it and welcomed her death? It was preposterous.

And yet she couldn't get it out of her head.

Just how angry would Thomas be? Would his rage match her own? Would their debts be paid and all forgiven or would he see her crime as worse? It would be born of revenge after all and premeditated. How long could a crime of passion be considered so?

Perhaps he would even kill Edith himself. And what perfect justice that would be.

Lucille found herself almost uncomfortably aware of Edith's physical presence. They spent every day together, writing or doing accounts, reading or playing old songs on the piano. Lucille was distracted suddenly by the way she loosened her hair as the afternoons ticked by or the pale flash of a wrist reaching for the ink well, by the sound of her breathing.

"What are you writing today?" she asked once when the silence was suddenly unbearable.

Edith looked up in surprise. She was becoming more and more comfortable in the house, but she still sometimes flinched at direct questions. And she blushed now, her cheeks a little fuller and healthier in these past days since Lucille had reduced the amount of poison she was inbibing. It was a cautionary measure, just postponing her death until the money came through. Edith deluded herself that she was finally growing used to the British climate.

"It's... Er... My publisher wanted me to include a romance, and so I tried, but it... It didn't seem right. It didn't ring true. So I am practising, trying to make it more realistic. Though, of course, I made my first attempt before I had ever really been in love. I think now I might be better at it."

Anger had almost become a rare emotion, or at least dulled through overuse, but Lucille felt it now. Edith thought that Thomas returned her feelings no doubt. As if she could know, could withstand what it was to be truly loved. Love is bitter and selfish, wanting and grasping. It was sickness and worry and pain, the never-ending fear that things might change, that her world could shatter and break her heart with it. That she might not be enough, or worse, that she was too much. Did Edith have such depth of feeling? Would she kill for Thomas if he asked?

Would she die for him?

"Read it to me," Lucille commanded.

"It's not finished. It's barely started actually."

"I don't mind. I'd like to hear it. Just a short passage, if you'd prefer."

Edith hesitated, nervously shuffling the papers in front of her.

"All right. Erm... This is my hero, Augustus, thinking of his lover, Phyllis, who died very recently."

She coughed, clearing her throat and began to read.

"'I did not want to consider the truth before me; that she was gone. Her marble flesh would never again be warm beneath my hands. She would never again laugh or speak with me. I would never again feel the press of her lips or the touch of her hand. Truly, as they laid her in the ground, I felt that a part of myself was buried too. The ache in my soul was never to heal, her empty presence following me day and night. I longed to hear her voice and yet my heart trembled when in the night I...' No, wait, I've used 'night' too many times there."

Pain. Loss. Edith's reflection of such emotions was perhaps understandable. She did seem to have been close to her father. Lucille could not pretend that she felt guilt for what she had done to Carter Cushing. He'd known too much. It had been necessary and relatively quick. But Edith's grief had been pushed aside for marriage and never fully dealt with. They'd snapped her up before she had organised her mind. It had been almost insultingly easy to whisk her away from her society and into isolation, the sorrow in her heart ready to sap at her will to live.

"Lucille?"

"Yes, dear? Sorry. I was absorbing it."

A little smile, modest but proud.

"I do find it difficult," Edith said. "I feel I must describe what precisely it is he loved about her, but... Well, he is a man. I fear that I am not able to inhabit a man's mind."

Lucille frowned and ascended the stairs to sit with her.

"You sell yourself short. Of course you can imagine a man's psyche. Literature has hardly given you a choice in the matter. I know that you admire Mary Shelley. Were you not Frankenstein when you read his words? Did you not understand his mind?"

"Well, yes, but _Frankenstein_ is a very feminine story all the same. It's about motherhood."

She laughed at Lucille's unbelieving expression.

"It's true," she insisted. "It's about the creation of life. A child made artificially. Life minus biology. The guilt of a parent, faced with their child's crimes. Her own children nearly all died, you know. Mary Shelley's. It must have been awful. I don't think I can even imagine a pain like that."

Lucille stood up abruptly, the conversation getting a little too close to something she preferred not to think about.

"I have something interesting to show you," she said, perusing the shelves for a specific slim volume, hand-copied. "An unpublished novella of hers."

She found it fairly quickly. It was with all the unusual books, the rare ones that were probably worth a fortune but were part of the house and certainly not for sale.

"Where would you find such a thing?" Edith asked, excited at the very idea.

"One of our great uncles was a collector. Someone in William Godwin's employ copied it out and passed it on to him. _Matilda._ That's what it called. It's rather short. It won't take you long to devour it."

She held the book out, but playfully drew it back when Edith reached for it.

"I must warn you, it may shock you."

"Well, now I must read it."

She handled the book carefully, reverently. Like it was a holy relic.

"Do you mind if I play while you read?"

"Not at all."

She settled herself before the piano, her fingers settling over the keys."

_The piano. How she'd hated it as a child. Mother forced her to learn, making her spend hours practising so she could play for visitors and act the perfect daughter. It was the only time she was regularly released from the nursery, but Thomas was forbidden to join her. Any joy she might have found in it was dulled by knowing he was up there all alone._

_When she'd returned to the house after her absence, it had called to her. It all came back, little by little, familiar patterns. And then she began to sing those tunes that she and Thomas had invented together, finding the notes and adding to them, filling out the melodies with depths and heights._

_She hadn't been aware that Thomas was behind her as she played, perhaps a week after he'd brought her home. He was suddenly there, a warm presence at her back, his hands on her shoulders as she faltered._

_"Keep going," he'd urged. "It's been so long since I heard music."_

_She played every day then, just to please him._

_Sometimes he would crawl in front of her, pushing her feet from the pedals and easing her legs apart. He would look up at her, blue eyes gone dark as he shoved her skirts out of the way and nipped a playful bite into the inside of her thigh._

_"Come on," he'd say. "Let's see how long you can last without a wrong note."_

_Her record was five bars before she had to gasp, false chords stuttering from her trembling hands as he laughed against her flesh, his tongue flicking back and forth to make her moan and arch and grip his hair to guide him._

_If there was one sound that Thomas loved more than her playing, it was the sounds only he could draw from her._

_It was the happiest time of her life, those early days when it seemed nothing mattered outside their walls. Like nothing could threaten them anymore. When she would catch sight of the portrait of Mother on the wall and laugh and laugh and laugh. Don't you like my playing anymore? Have I not improved enough for you? Mm, Thomas, don't stop..._

Edith gasped somewhere behind her and she smiled knowingly to herself. She knew it would affect her. Sweet, innocent Edith.

"Are you not enjoying it?" she asked, hands dancing down a scale. "I know it's a little strange."

"When... When the father says he loves his daughter..."

"Yes. The exact same passion he felt for his dead wife. But he does feel very guilty about it."

She turned just in time to see Edith's face, so twisted and confused, laying the book down half-read.

"I... I'm not..."

"Well, there's a reason why when Mary Shelley sent this to her father for publication he suppressed it and refused to even return the manuscript. He knew what everyone would think."

"You... You don't think that he..."

"No, I don't," Lucille said, standing up. "But I do think people would have leapt readily to conclusions. Shall we make a start on dinner?"

The book had clearly disturbed Edith a little. Then again, when her father's death was so heavily on her mind, reading a perversion of paternal affection was bound to be concerning.

"So many books, Edith," she said, wrapping an arm around her waist in an attempt at a comforting gesture. "And they can't all be pleasant."

When they met Thomas in the hall, she let her hand linger, noting the way his jaw clenched to see it.

She tightened her grip, steering Edith towards the kitchen and smiling brightly.

"Just in time, Thomas. You can handle the turnip."

She wasn't convinced that boiled turnip was anyone's idea of a delicacy, but it was cheap and filling. That's the best that could be expected most of the time.

She felt his eyes on her as she went to unlock the pantry to get the vegetables, hearing him tell Edith not to get up, they could manage, and was not at all surprised when his hands gripped her hips a moment later, pulling her close.

"I don't need help," she murmured as he mouthed at the side of her neck.

"I have no intention of helping," he growled against her ear.

It was tempting, so tempting, to lock the door behind them and take a minute, but it would be better still to let the anticipation simmer. She pushed him back, spinning in his grasp.

"Later," she whispered, so close that their lips almost brushed. Almost, but not quite.

He reached behind her for the tea caddy and her heart leapt. Progress, at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's pretty much impossible for the Sharpes to own a copy of Matilda since it was only actually recovered and published in 1959, but it's my fic and I'll give them whatever pseudo-thematically relevant books I want.
> 
> (Also although I loved Edith's line about wanting to be Mary Shelley, you really don't want to be Mary Shelley. Wonderful writer, very bad luck.)


	8. Chapter 8

He held her down that night, face down, his touch possessive and demanding, needy, _jealous,_ the way she wanted him to be. She felt the warning scrape of his teeth at her shoulder, the bite of his nails into her hips as she strained and panted, one arm almost crushed beneath her as she worked her flesh to ensure her own completion.

The kisses afterwards, so forceful, a claim from both of them, fingers knotted in one another's hair and legs tangled together, bodies spent and aching from the effort.

She woke and stretched lazily the next morning, feeling her joints clicking. She hadn't even thought to get into her nightgown. It had been years since she'd last forgotten it.

"She won't wake up," Thomas said from somewhere behind her, his voice blank, haunted. "I can't wake her."

Lucille's eyes flashed open, pulling on nightclothes as quickly as possible, hair streaming out behind her.

"How much did you give her last night?" she asked as they rushed down the stairs.

"Three tablespoons in the pot. She was getting better."

"Yes, because I'd dropped the dose from two to one! Her inheritance hasn't come through yet. We still need her signature, witnessed."

Edith was still as death, on her side in the bed, a dark stain near her mouth from where the poison had made her cough up blood, lips completely white and body limp. Her heart was still beating though, her chest rising and falling. She was still alive, if barely.

"Milk," Lucille ordered. "A bowlful. And bread."

She dragged Edith into a sitting position while he ran to obey, pushing her back against the wall. Her head lolled onto her chest, hair falling like thick curtains around her face.

"Edith," she said firmly, shaking her shoulder. "Come on. It's time to get up."

Thomas entered the room, setting down the things she'd asked for on the bedside table.

"The men," he said helplessly. "They're here."

"Then go to them."

"But..."

"But what, Thomas? What can you do here now? No, go outside and work. Everything is as it should be, do you understand? There is nothing amiss. Your wife and sister are indoors in each other's company as usual."

He gritted his teeth but nodded, brief and sharp, looking over her shoulder to where Edith sat, crumpled like a broken doll.

"Will she... Will she die?"

Lucille sighed, pulling her hair back from her face and securing it with one of Edith's ribbons. Surely she wouldn't begrudge lending it for a morning. It was yellow. The colour somehow made her uneasy. Such a strange thing to attract her fear.

"They all die, Thomas," she said. "The poison is in her blood stream, more seeping in all the time. It's tearing her open from the inside. Making her vomit will make things worse, so I have to slow it down. Milk. Bread. Infant food. Padding out her stomach so it isn't absorbed so fast."

"She... She's not conscious, how will you make her eat?"

She laid both hands on his shoulders, placing a sweet kiss to his cheek.

"Don't worry. I'll manage. Go outside."

She turned back to Edith and suppressed a shudder.

_"You have to eat something."_

_It was her first rebellion against the separation, a desperate bid for freedom. They couldn't keep her if she wouldn't eat. They couldn't let her starve to death. She would force them to free her._

_For a week she refused to let anything pass her lips but water. She wept with the pain of it, but tried to be strong. She could conquer her own weak flesh._

_And weak was the right word for it. She'd had barely any strength left when they came to break her little fast._

_She could still remember the awful pain as they'd forced her mouth open, the metal clamps cutting into her gums, her own blood so bitter on her tongue and the feeling that she would die, she would drown in the thick, porridgey liquid they were forcing down her throat, her body held in place and powerless to save herself from being violated._

_How she'd choked and spit most of it up afterwards, tinged pink with blood, and lay curled upon the floor for hours, motionless._

_"I'll eat..." she'd begged. "Please, not again. I'll eat."_

_It was a good decision, she told herself. She had to be strong for when Thomas came for her._

At least Edith was not awake and fighting. No, it would be easier on her.

Lucille shredded a little bread with trembling hands, too many awful memories coming back to her, and stirred it with her finger to make a sort of soup.

How best to do this? The easiest way would surely be to sit behind, tilting her head back, but her face would be hidden and the angle somewhat awkward. No, that wouldn't do.

She ended up kneeling upon the bed, trying to guess which angle might open Edith's throat but not her lungs, tipping the bowl minutely to let the mixture spread upon her tongue and start to trickle downwards.

It was painstakingly slow, and so imprecise. For all she knew she was slowly drowning Edith in milk. But she kept breathing, her heart still beating, eyelids fluttering when around a third of the bowl was gone.

Lucille laid it down on the floor.

"Edith?"

"Hmm?"

She let out a long exhale, a breath she hadn't known she was holding, a little frown on Edith's face.

"What's...? Oh, Thomas, it hurts."

"Hush now. You're very ill. Don't strain, I'll be right back."

"Don't leave me."

It was said with such pitiable sadness that Lucille found herself hesitating, unsure whether to go and fetch a spoon to feed her with or to stay where she was.

"No, Thomas, stay."

Oh...

"I'm not Thomas."

Her eyes were open, but unseeing, little hands reaching for her.

"Please."

"I'm not..."

She ended up half cradling Edith, stroking her hair while she clung desperately to her nightgown, mumbling and murmuring nonsense.

Lucille found herself singing softly, feeling as Edith's vice-like grip loosened slightly.

"I'm so tired," she whispered.

"You mustn't sleep. If you go to sleep, you might never wake up."

_"Is she dead?" Thomas had asked when his first wife perished. "Are you sure? She's not just sleeping?"_

_It had taken so long, so many months of trying to poison her, their technique not yet refined. And she had been so stupid, so trusting, it should have been easy._

_They all died in their sleep. How dare they haunt her for giving them such peaceful ends?_

As long as Edith was awake, she wouldn't die. That made sense, didn't it? So she had to make her stay awake, had to wait until she came back to herself.

Lucille leant over with Edith still in her arms, scrabbling on the bedside table until she managed to get hold of another slice of bread and tear off a corner of it.

"Here. Eat."

"No. I feel so sick."

"Ssh... You have to eat."

Edith sighed and pouted but obediently took a small bite, chewing slowly like a placid cow and swallowing with effort. No doubt her throat was raw from coughing. And then she was murmuring again, so faint but audibly petulant.

"What's that?"

"You never kiss me anymore. Not properly."

"Edith, I am not Thomas. Look at me."

"Why won't you kiss me?"

Oh, this was intolerable. She wanted to slap some sense into her. _He doesn't kiss you because he is not yours to kiss. You are not entitled to his love or affection. You were a passing fancy, nothing more._

"You need to keep eating," she said instead.

Edith clung a little tighter to her arm.

"If I eat, will you kiss me?"

Lucille laughed in spite of herself. Such childish bargaining. Edith was clearly losing her faculties.

"No, I won't. You're delusional. Can you not tell that I am Lucille? I know we are brother and sister, but we are not so similar as to be confused. We're hardly Viola and Sebastian."

"Please..."

Was she not listening? Or had her mind now been poisoned, some kind of brain deterioration?

"If you won't kiss me, I won't eat."

A sigh, but she knew this train of thought. She had driven a similar one to its logical conclusion after all.

She gazed down at Lucille's lips, so bloodless today that they blended into her face. They did look soft. And if making Thomas jealous and hateful was the goal, she would have to give him new reasons for it. This brush with death might throw him back into pity for Edith after all.

What was the harm in trying?

Outside, she could just hear the calls of the men, the occasional clanks and groans of the engine. Thomas would not be back in for hours, so long as he had followed her instructions and was behaving normally.

Well...

"Finish this slice," she said softly. "And I shall kiss you. I promise."

Edith reached for the bread eagerly, tearing off chunk after chunk until she'd successfully forced it down, then turning expectantly...

And frowning.

"Lucille?"

"Oh, good. You're seeing clear again. You had yourself convinced that I was Thomas no matter what I said."

Edith flushed a gentle shade of pink, probably all the blood as her body could spare rushing to her cheeks.

"I tried to... Oh, Lucille, I'm so sorry."

She tried desperately to stifle her giggles. This was too funny. Poor Edith. At least it looked like she wouldn't die of anything worse than embarrassment today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. SO CLOSE and yet so far...


	9. Chapter 9

Don't worry about it," Lucille said, patting Edith vaguely on the arm.

"But I... Would you have...? No. No, I'm sorry."

"Would I have done it? Why, yes, of course. It might have been the only way to make you eat."

"But what about Thomas?"

"Well, I'm sure if I gave him the choice between a sick wife and a wife who had briefly kissed his sister, I think I know what one he'd choose. Besides, kissing another woman hardly counts, does it? It's not like I am your husband's brother. It's quite different."

Edith did not seem at all convinced.

"I'm not sure..." she began.

"Why, I could kiss you now and the world would continue to turn and the sun would still rise and nothing bad would happen."

Edith was looking at her in some alarm, like a rabbit caught in a fox's gaze, waiting for it to pounce. Her eyes flicked down to her lips and Lucille could almost see her mind at work, wondering what it would be like, whether it would be different to kissing Thomas.

"Have you ever kissed anyone except my brother?"

"Not properly."

"And what is 'proper' kissing?"

She couldn't meet Lucille's gaze, twisting the bed linen between her fingers.

"On the mouth," she murmured.

"Open mouthed?"

Edith nodded, lips tight.

"Yes, I think I know what you mean, Edith. Soft but forceful, gentle but hard, tasting one another and nipping just a little. That kind of kissing."

_Kissing had come to them as naturally as breathing. She could not remember a time when they did not kiss one another. The loud, playful kisses of childhood slid into the more passionate ones of lovers. How she had missed them in her confinement. How she had rejoiced in relearning the taste of him._

The poor girl was almost shuddering, wary and lost in this new conversation. The obvious question seemed stuck in her throat and Lucille waited patiently for her to voice it.

"You have... kissed like that? But you're... You have never been married."

She couldn't help but laugh.

"Are only married people allowed to kiss? Did you diligently await the priest's permission before indulging? The rules of the marriage bed are for one purpose - progeny. They are in place so that men know that any child birthed by their wife is their own. 'Forsaking all others' has a very specific meaning. A kiss cannot father a child, far less a kiss from another woman."

And now there was another question hanging between them, one she knew Edith wouldn't dare ask. She wanted to know if Lucille had ever kissed a woman as lovers do. She wanted to ask what it was like.

But she wouldn't. Of course not.

"You must be hungry," Lucille said, ceasing her torture for a little while. "Can I trust you not to fall asleep while I get you something more substantial? I think we should stay up here today, since you are ill. I'll fetch your manuscript."

She made soup of yesterday's bones, thick and nourishing, padded out with yet more bread to line Edith's stomach. There would be no tea tonight, nor possibly until the end of the week.

At least Edith was looking brighter when she returned, a makeshift desk made of the bedside table.

"Is there kissing in your romance?" Lucille asked as they ate, pleased by the way her insistence on this subject made Edith wince and shift.

"There is, yes. A little."

"And you've used your own experience as a guide?"

"Do you... think that wrong?"

Lucille drained her bowl, enjoying making Edith wait, and carefully put both of them out of harm's way.

"Well, you told me of your concern that you were not fully in your hero's mind. Kissing is different for men, I think. If you are using your description of Thomas's kisses, I fear it may not read as the kiss of a woman. But then I am not a writer."

The thought was clearly taking root and starting to grow now. With luck it would grow into a whole tree of curiosity and she would then act on it.

"How are women different, do you think?"

Ah, an intelligent wording. She was not asking if Lucille had experience, but merely for her opinion.

"Touch your lips, Edith. Go on. Feel them. That is the thinnest skin on your body. So sensitive. Now, of course, women's skin tends to be thinner than men's, therefore our lips are softer than theirs. Warmer, for the blood is closer to the surface. Our kisses are gentle, careful, for we know how easy it is to bruise. When a woman kisses hard, you know she's afraid. Afraid of the feelings in her breast, afraid that her lover will leave her, afraid that one day she will not have this feeling. A kiss can tell you everything."

Edith had started by running the tip of one finger curiously over her lips but had stopped towards the end of the little speech, resting on the plumpest part. Lucille reached out to take her hand, feeling her breath against her fingers, bringing her knuckles to her own mouth and kissing them, then the warm softness of her inner wrist, eyes never leaving her face. She was breathing unsteadily, a strangeness in her eyes as Lucille nuzzled gently at her veins.

"How does it feel, Edith? Different?"

She swallowed hard, gasping as Lucille switched to open-mouthed kisses, leaving traces of moisture on her skin.

"Hmm? How does it feel? Do you like it?"

"Yes."

It was almost a squeak, frightened and small. Lucille leant closer, reaching out to brush her face with her thumb, tilting her chin so she could kiss her temple, her cheekbone, her jaw...

Edith turned suddenly and brought their mouths together, uncertain and grasping, tasting of victory. Lucille was patient, letting her lead, waiting for her to tentatively grow bolder and start to part her lips readily. She was so soft, so gentle, nothing at all like the way Thomas kissed, all need and surety.

Her lies had been true after all.

There was a sharp inhale when they broke apart, a little flush on Edith's cheeks and a wild look about her. Like she was amazed and shocked at herself for what she had done.

Lucille smiled at her, heart dancing.

"Now you know. See? The sky has not fallen."

The first giggle seemed to break some kind of dam within them.

They were still laughing when Thomas came in, evidently relieved to see Edith awake and alert, but suspicious of what they were sharing without him.

_Don't worry, brother. I'll let you find out soon enough._

"You gave me quite a shock this morning," he said, smiling in a way that didn't quite hide enough. "Feeling better?"

"Oh, yes. Lucille took such good care of me."

"I'm sure she did."

Edith smiled happily, but Lucille could feel the meaning concealed in his words. How he planned to 'take care' of Lucille in return later on. 

As thanks or punishment, she couldn't tell.

And honestly, she didn't care. The result would surely be much the same.

He held her in his lap that night, firm and careful and disciplined, rocking up into her, his face nestled in the space between her breasts, kissing her sternum and occasionally straying to her nipples while she sighed and gasped and wondered why her thoughts kept floating back to Edith.

How would her lips feel pressed against such sensitive flesh? Thomas knew her body almost as his own, but she would be shy, nervous, require guidance.

And Edith's body... She was so used to the solidity of Thomas, all rib and muscle, firm plains of skin. What would it be like to grip soft hips and to feel the powder-light hair on her stomach, the give of her breasts and inner thighs?

What sounds might she make? Would she sigh or moan or beg?

Thomas nipped a tiny bite into her chest, making her gasp and buck, feeling his breathy laughter and joining in. How powerful she felt at this moment as he reached between their bodies to rub where she needed him to.

She could do anything now. Nothing could stop her. If she wanted Edith, she would have her.

Thomas spilled before she was finished and used his mouth to complete her, laying her back against the pillows and practically lapping his own spend from her.

Lucille shivered and moaned, panting desperately for release and then for mercy, the blend of both of them on Thomas's lips afterwards making her dizzy with warmth.

She fell asleep wondering how Edith might taste.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, there is infant mortality in this chapter, please be aware.

Edith was nervous and flighty the next day, startling at every noise and barely speaking. She was still visibly ill and feeling the cold despite being wrapped in a thick woollen blanket on her usual perch.

Evidently she had been thinking during the night. Overthinking. And that wouldn't do at all.

"Are you feeling guilty about what we did yesterday?" Lucille asked, allowing no run up, no time to consider how to answer.

She heard Edith's pen clatter to the floor.

"I... Yes. To be honest, yes. I am."

"Why?"

"Because it's unfair to Thomas."

"Is it? Is he denied your kisses now that I have kissed you? Are you any less in love with him?"

"No, but... I cannot stop thinking of it."

Lucille held back her smile.

"Has it disturbed you?"

She was still on the lower floor, but she could see Edith's head, flinching and moving as though in search of an escape.

"No. Not disturbed me as such."

"Did you like it?"

There was no response. She assumed an affirmative.

"You know," Lucille said. "Thomas will often be away on business. You and I may be left quite alone for weeks at a time. It would be very easy to be lonely..."

_Thomas had never made her cope through the night by herself until the night he and Edith had spent at the post office. He knew how important it was that she wasn't left alone. But Edith need not know that. And the poor girl had such a phobia of spending the night with just the ghosts for company._

"When he travels, perhaps it would be better if I came down to your room, like we did when Thomas was staying in the village. Share our warmth a little."

Edith was shaking visibly, her breath forming clouds in front of her face in the cold.

"What do you think, Edith?"

"I... I don't know. Will he really be gone often?"

"So many men to meet with, to sell to... Clay mining is not an easy industry."

Again no response, a sure sign of Edith thinking. Considering.

"Do you get lonely, Lucille?"

And now trying to turn the attack back on her. It was charming, in a clumsy way, how she attempted to make her uncomfortable.

"Indeed. I have longed for a companion. A friend. A lover..."

She heard Edith's breath hitch. And what lies she was telling. She had never longed for anyone but Thomas, never wanted or coveted anyone but him.

So why did she want Edith now?

The question startled her, an intrusive thought, far deeper than she normally cared to reach. Why did she want Edith? Jealousy? Anger? A vague need to possess everything Thomas was and had? Or something else, some buried desire of her own? Some combination of these reasons most likely and she had not the bravery to try to discern what it was.

"Come sit by me," Lucille said, moving from her desk to the chaise. "We should talk this through. Otherwise we will be strained and uncomfortable for days."

Edith hesitated, finally standing and moving awkwardly, like a puppet with broken strings. She wouldn't make eye contact, keeping her gaze firmly in her own lap and worrying the edges of her blanket with nervous fingers.

"You feel bad because you enjoyed it and you feel that you shouldn't have."

A statement, not a question. Edith nodded mutely, the shame practically rolling off her.

"Hmm. Well, I'm afraid I'm not sure what we can do about that. Can you tell me why exactly you feel it was wrong?"

Edith flinched away when she tried to lay a hand on her shoulder.

"It... It's because I love Thomas. I love him. So kissing someone else, anyone else, should feel wrong, but it..."

She'd said more than she'd meant to, stuttering and stammering, trying to take it back.

"You feel guilty because you do not feel guilty. I see. But do you not think that perhaps your lack of guilt is telling you something?"

"Like what?"

"That it's nothing to worry about. You still love Thomas with all your heart. Your lips are not your heart. Your body is not your heart. It is hardly a betrayal, is it? Why, when you are old, surely you will not touch as young lovers do, but will that mean you love each other any less? Of course not. Flesh is flesh, Edith. It's what you feel inside that matters."

_Flesh is a prison that aches. It is heaviness and swelling, bleeding and pain. She wants the child this time, she wants an heir for them, for the house, she wants to treat her child better than the world has ever treated her and to shield it from the all the evils she endured._

_Pregnancy is hard, her nerves on fire, her body sore and nothing soothing her, nothing helping. Even Thomas irritates her._

_"You did this," she wants to say. "And I love you enough that I will do this for you, I will allow my body to house your child, but do not ask me to be joyful in it. Not yet."_

_Their child is born wrong, sick, malformed. He can barely breathe. And Thomas's wife says she will take care of him, that he will inherit, that she will legitimise him, say he is hers, and Lucille burns with envy. He is her son, hers and Thomas's, and though she knows it is the best plan, still it pains her to think that he will not call out for her in the night but for another._

_She bleeds for six weeks after the birth._

_The child lives for five._

_Lucille spends a long time looking at the grey little corpse before she's made to leave, and then in a state of numbness, going up to the nursery and looking at the empty space her child should occupy and then destroying it with her bare hands, not even caring that they bleed._

_She is always bleeding now, like a saturated sponge, dripping with it. She longs to bleed out upon the floor, she thinks about drinking all the arsenic and letting oblivion take her. Thomas has to beg her to eat, stopping just shy of forcing her._

_"We lost him, Lucille. Do not make me lose you too. I would die if that happened."_

_And that woke her somehow. It slowly made her determined to live and spite them all, spite the world that had punished her so, regaining her strength and killing her most recent sister-in-law without a thought, making Thomas drink from her swollen breasts and trying not to scream and tear out her hair when her child's shade appeared in that woman's arms..._

"Lucille?"

"Hm?"

Edith looked at her with concern.

"Are you feeling well? You've gone quite pale. Do you need water or something?"

Lucille stood a little shakily. This conversation had not gone as planned. What was it about Edith that made these memories surface?

"Let's go to the kitchen. It will be warmer in there."

Edith went to the door and gasped when she pulled it open.

"It's snowing," she said, laughing. "Lucille, it's snowing."

Small, delicate flakes were drifting down from the hole in the roof, Edith holding her hand out for them, her blanket like a cloak as she playfully span around in her own private snowfall.

Her laughter echoed, a joyful, strange sound as she twirled, reaching for Lucille with a wide smile.

A moment's hesitation and their hands were joined, spinning together in a clumsy waltz, wet footprints on the floor. A childish thing to do and yet Edith's pleasure was infectious, her innocent happiness spreading unexpected warmth through Lucille, an affection that she was carefully trying to ignore like that would stifle it.

She pulled Edith closer, a hand on her waist and their bodies touching, just embracing one another, barely turning anymore. She couldn't tell how long she stood watching the snow flakes land in Edith's hair.

"You'll catch your death standing there."

"Thomas!"

Edith span from her grasp and ran to him, leaving Lucille alone in the snow and looking at the happy couple.

But then Edith reached back, inviting her in, drawing her into their perfection, Thomas's arm around her and Edith's hand in hers.

It was just for a moment, a mere second in which she could inhale the scent of them both blending with the sharp smell of snow, before they broke apart and her heart ached for the loss of their proximity, wanting to cling and make them sit down and die beside her, die happy and together.

Such a moment might never come again. And that thought scared her more than she could say.

If Edith wasn't there, she might grab Thomas and make him comfort her with kisses.

If Thomas wasn't there, she might make Edith do the same.

Either way, her heart yearned.

When Thomas automatically reached for the tea caddy that night, she almost knocked it out of his hands.


	11. Chapter 11

He doesn't question her about it and that somehow makes it worse. If he was at least curious about what had happened, what had come over her, then she could lie, to him and to herself. But he assumed she knew best. Assumed that queries would be unwelcome.

And for misreading her, she punished him, pleading exhaustion when they went to bed, even though resisting his kisses was torture for her. And he was sweet and obedient, wrapping an arm around her from behind to help ground her through the night.

_Learning to ground herself had been the hardest thing about separation. Even before they had begun routinely spending the night together, the knowledge that he wasn't far away was always present in her mind._

_She'd felt like a seedling, plucked and ripped from its shelter and forced to bed down elsewhere, withering and wilting as she refused to put down roots._

_He'd been her sun and her gentle rain, the only source of nourishment - emotional nourishment - that she had ever known. Being kept apart was like starving, her heart deprived of all goodness and shrivelled like a prune._

She held on to his arm, holding it by her chest, hoping for the confusion she was facing to abate, to stop. This was Thomas's arm, Thomas's hand, Thomas's place, in bed beside her. Comforting and yearning and obedient, that was how he was. Maddening and beautiful and rebellious, he was those also.

Hers. And that was most important.

She must have slept, for she was woken by sobbing, deep cries that she did not know. The spirits had never made such a sound.

"Thomas?" she heard Edith's shaking voice. "Thomas?"

Lucille left him sleeping, rushing down the stairs.

"I can't find him," Edith said, tears streaming down her face.

"Back to bed. Come on. It's freezing out here."

"But..."

"Ssh... Ssh, you're still so ill. You must go to bed. I will find Thomas and send him to you. Don't worry."

Edith was whimpering, glancing fearfully down the corridor towards the bathroom, terrible wailing sounds echoing from it. Lucille carefully pretended not to hear, guiding her back to the master bedroom.

"Hush. It's alright. I'll get him."

She wondered later if it truly had been her intention to wake Thomas and send him down. She certainly went up to her room, finding him still peacefully asleep on his stomach.

And then her eyes fell on his clothes, abandoned on the floor, and her heart jumped.

It was dark in Edith's room. Very dark.

She plaited her hair loosely, allowing one or two wisps of it to hang free at the front and pulled on his trousers. They didn't fit well, but they stayed up around her hips. And the shirt... Well, it would do, even though it wanted to slip from her shoulders and that by leaving the neck unbuttoned the curve at the top of her breasts was visible. Edith wouldn't be able to see that.

_Between beginning their affair proper and the day they were caught, Lucille became strangely obsessed with exchanging their roles. She liked to wear Thomas's things, both for the scent of him and for the way they made her feel. Powerful. Important. Like some of what she saw in him was kept in his clothing and she could slip on some of his passion as easily as putting on a coat._

_If she tucked her hair beneath a hat and was careful not to speak and kept her head down, she could sometimes pass as a young man in dim light. She had made Thomas take her into the village once, two lads out together, and taken great delight in the anonymity, the liberty, going to the bar to order and all but daring the landlord to reveal her true sex._

_She had no desire to be a man as such. She just wanted the freedoms they had._

_Of course, back when she was fouteen, she'd got the thrashing of her life for being caught wearing trousers. It was lucky that Thomas had already wriggled out of the corset._

In silhouette against the moonlight from the hall, she looked like her brother. She could see Edith, eyes shining in the darkness, smiling so happily before she closed the door and plunged them both into total darkness.

Edith reached for her, demanding comfort, easily soothed by warmth and caresses. Lucille knew that she couldn't speak, but couldn't help a little sigh when kisses were laid on her neck and then round to her mouth.

Her heart beat hard at that, both from pleasure and fear. They had kissed before. Surely Edith would notice that she was not Thomas. She tried to be forceful, claiming, the way he was, and Edith let out a little sound of surprise. Perhaps he'd been more gentle with her. And yet she was making no move to stop this. On the contrary, she was striving for more and Lucille felt almost dizzy with it.

Of course, as Edith's hands grew bolder, moving from her face to her shoulders, the risk of discovery would be greater also. But Lucille had a plan suddenly, an idea to sate her own desire while allowing minimum contact. And then surely this obsession would leave her.

Edith gasped as she pushed her down and began kissing from her neck down her sternum and over her stomach before starting to shove her nightgown up. Being unable to see, she could only feel the soft skin of Edith's legs, the downy hair upon them, and she took her time to be curious and run her hands up and down before pushing her thighs apart and crawling between them.

She kissed the quivering flesh from her knees almost to the centre of her, inhaling the rich perfume of her arousal and feeling the furrows of stretchmark scars at her hips, her touch growing possessive as she felt Edith's weight shifting, her back arching helplessly, panting echoing through the room.

How teasing she was, moving closer and closer, nose brushing against thicker hair but never moving in close enough, her breath making Edith squirm and whimper, desperate hands lunging for her...

Lucille froze as Edith gripped her hair, drawing out her plait and feeling it. She knew. And now she would surely scream...

"Keep going," Edith whispered, so faint.

"What?"

"Lucille, I... I want you to keep going. Please."

She cried out when Lucille tentatively tasted her. She'd only ever sucked her own flavour from Thomas's fingers and Edith was different, faintly bitter but not unpleasant. And even if it had been so, Lucille would have been unable to stop. She was the roaring tide now, sure and unstoppable.

Almost holding Edith down, she followed the undulations of her hips, seeking out the peak of her pleasure and practically snarling with the power running through her veins.

"No-one has done this to you before, have they?" she whispered.

"No... Ah! No. Don't stop, please."

She only needed one finger, rubbing upwards as she continued to use her tongue, rapidly flicking it back and forth against just the right spot, Edith's thighs tightening around her until with a sharp cry her climax hit, body shaking and whimpering as Lucille kept going, only ceasing when Edith dragged her back.

How she wished she could see properly. How prettily Edith would blush, her hair all tangled against the pillow, her nightgown wrinkled and crushed.

Instead she crawled up Edith's body and let her taste herself from her tongue, hands gripping so tightly to her borrowed shirt.

Lucille daren't speak in case her voice broke this strange spell that had taken over them, just kissing and kissing until Edith's attentions grew sluggish and she fell into sleep.

She expected to feel something. Triumph perhaps or guilt. But really all she felt was the need to bring Edith to that crisis of pleasure again as soon as possible.

Unnerved by this reaction, Lucille retreated, changing back into her nightgown and re-finding her place in Thomas's arms.

When she kissed his sleeping lips, he frowned faintly, as though confused by how she tasted. But he did not wake.

In the hallway, the ghosts wailed.


	12. Chapter 12

"Darling? Sister, it's time to wake up."

Lucille murmured sleepily, not yet ready to be pulled from her dreams. She could feel Thomas sitting on the bed beside her and reached blindly for him, dragging him down on top of her and arching her back.

"We don't have time for that," he said, running his hands up her sides and over her clothed breasts anyway.

"Mmm," she moaned into his mouth, trying to pull him closer still and protesting when the sound of knocking at the front door carried up from downstairs and he began to move away.

"Later," he insisted. "I promise."

She lay still for a few moments after he left, the faint burn of arousal coursing through her, a hint of frustration tinging her thoughts. She could use her fingers and take care of herself, of course, but it wasn't quite what she wanted. She wanted warmth and the feeling of another person so close by, to hear breathing and feel hands upon her. No, she would allow this to smolder a while longer, getting dressed and plaiting her hair just a little too tightly.

Edith was not in the parlour as she usually was, nor in the kitchen. Still asleep then. Lucille took the lift, the metal of it somehow comforting to her in its solidity.

There was thumping and shuffling from inside the master bedroom, the door slightly ajar. Edith was up and dressed in one of her yellow silk gowns, dragging boxes out of the wardrobe.

"What are you doing?" Lucille asked.

Edith did not pause or look at her, stuffing dresses into a suitcase.

"I have to leave. I have to get out of here."

Lucille felt her heart skip a beat. Leave? No. No, she couldn't leave. That was not the plan. That could not happen.

"Why?"

No reply. Lucille stepped forward, physically grasping Edith's wrists and forcing her back against the wall.

"Look at me, Edith. Tell me why you want to abandon your home, your husband, your new family."

Edith's eyes were filled with angry tears.

"Did you think I'd believe it a dream? Did you think I'd stay here, afraid of where my mind would go in the night? Did you laugh to think of me, so scared and innocent and easily led?"

They were both breathing hard, so close together.

"You knew it was me," Lucille said. "You wanted me to keep going. You kissed me afterwards in full knowledge of what we had chosen to do together."

"And then you left me. I woke alone as I have every morning since I got here."

"So you would have preferred me to stay?"

"I... I want to feel loved. I want to feel that I am wanted. I want Thomas to talk to me, I want... I'm so lonely here. Brief physical enjoyment cannot fix that."

Lucille felt her grip loosen, pulling Edith into her arms.

"Don't leave me," she said. "Please. Don't leave."

"Why shouldn't I?"

The inspiration came to her in a flash. It meant a little sacrifice on her part, but if it convinced Edith to stay...

"Because you're the only other person who sees them. Because you have seen the ghosts."

Edith went stiff, shaking.

"You... You see them? Truly?"

Lucille had never admitted such a thing before. Talk of it tended to upset Thomas. But then again, he was obsessed with keeping his own hands and mind clean. Perhaps he was afraid that the talk would cause them to visit him too.

"My mother's ghost has haunted me ever since she died. The others appeared later. I know them. The woman with the infant, the rotten one, the one who hides behind doors. I know how they scream and yell and disturb you in the night because they disturb me too..."

"But you... You said there was nothing there. You said I was imagining it."

"I lied."

She went weak, falling forward and forcing Lucille to steer her over to the bed, sitting her down on a spot clear of her clothes.

"No-one ever believed me," she said, voice shaking. "They thought me mad with grief so I... I stopped talking about the time my mother came to me... But who are they? The young women, who are they?"

"I don't know," Lucille lied. So many lies, too many truths.

"And why can't Thomas see them?"

"Perhaps they have nothing to say to him."

Edith frowned but said nothing, obviously troubled by this. But the fight to leave seemed to have gone from her.

"Shall I start hanging these up again?" Lucille asked, getting a distracted nod in return.

She worked around Edith, putting her clothes away, smoothing out the creases as best she could. Only once she'd closed the wardrobe did Edith grab her hand.

"We should find out who they are," she said. "We should lay them to rest."

_They are resting, down in the basement._

"They are dead, Edith."

"But aren't you curious? They could be your relatives."

_They are my sisters, as you are._

"I tend to focus on the living. Their needs are more important."

She sat down on the bed, carefully unpinning and unraveling Edith's hair.

"We've been neglecting you," she murmured. "Me and Thomas both. I see it now. Our beautiful butterfly needs the warmth of affection and we have been remiss in providing it."

She began to undo the laces at the back of Edith's dress, waiting for her to call a halt. Waiting for her to say no.

"I can stop if you'd prefer?"

"No," Edith said, blushing. "No, please, continue."

So she had liked it. Lucille leant in to kiss her jaw and neck, methodically divesting her of her clothes, stripping her torso and looking her fill of her, inhaling the warm scent of her flesh.

"Stand up," she whispered, excited to finally _see_ Edith completely nude, to see the slight curve of her lower stomach giving way to the area between her legs, the hair that was slightly darker than that on her head.

Edith shifted a little uncomfortably. She was embarrassed to be examined so.

Lucille pulled her closer, hands at her waist, kissing her bare skin once she was stood between her legs.

"You're beautiful," she said. "So beautiful."

"Thomas hasn't... He hasn't seen me like this. Not naked, not completely."

Her heart leapt, so glad to be first, glad to hear how little Thomas had strayed in fact, that she was the one exploring new territory with Edith.

"But now you," Edith prompted, undoing the ties on her dress. "You too."

No. No, no-one was allowed to see. Only Thomas had ever...

She let her dress pool around her waist, standing up to step out of it before moving to sit against the headboard, still wearing her long underwear. None of her scars could be seen this way.

"Come here," she commanded, so pleased when Edith obeyed, tentatively straddling her and looking quizzical.

"Is this...all right? We're not doing anything wrong?"

Lucille captured her lips with her own and didn't respond. Her hands roamed freely over naked skin, up Edith's thighs and down her back, fingers tweaking her nipples slightly, their lips never breaking apart until Lucille needed to move her.

"Turn around," she whispered. "Lean back against me."

The speed with which Edith obeyed sent a happy shiver through her.


	13. Chapter 13

"Edith? Lucille?"

The sound of the lift grille being drawn shut echoed up to them, Edith squirming and struggling in her grasp. Lucille had been carefully coaxing her through climax after climax, watching her become almost drunk on sensation and kissing relentlessly whenever she was too sensitive for more touch, goosebumps blooming across her flesh.

"Lucille, no," Edith panted as her grip grew tighter. "No, he'll see..."

Which of course was exactly what Lucille intended. She had Edith sat between her legs, chest to back, her fingers running in languid circles against her clit while her other arm held her around the waist.

"No..."

The door creaked open and Lucille felt her heart almost stop at the sight of Thomas standing there. _Look at us, brother. Look your fill._

Edith was panting and shaking her head, cringing away, but Thomas wasn't consulting her. His eyes had locked with Lucille's and visibly darkened as she nodded encouragingly.

"Edith feels neglected," she said softly. "We have not been taking care of her."

"Have we not?" Thomas said, slipping out of his coat and removing his cravat before crawling onto the bed. "Then we must repair this immediately."

Edith was trembling in her arms, letting out a little gasp as Thomas grew close and laid his hands on her, running up her thighs before easing them apart. He drew Lucille's hand away, licking the taste of his wife from her fingers and looking up at them both in undisguised desire before leaning down to run his tongue over Edith's folds.

How strange and wonderful to see this from the outside. Lucille's body was thrumming with arousal as Edith whimpered, finding her hand to grip on to, her chest heaving in an attempt to get enough air.

"Is it good?" Lucille asked, knowing the answer already. "Do you like your husband's mouth?"

"Yes," Edith managed. "Yes, it's good, it's... Oh..."

She could hear Thomas laughing slightly and found only imagine how that must feel for Edith, the vibration against her skin, the most exquisite torture. Her thighs were almost clamped around his head, beginning to shake in a way that Lucille had become something close to an expert in, her desperate cries growing higher the closer she was.

"There," Lucille said. "Right there. Give her more."

Thomas was definitely using at least one finger now, teasing with it if Edith's little yelps were anything to judge by.

"Do it, Thomas. Make her come. I know you can do it."

She tilted Edith's head to the side to kiss her, drinking her moans as Thomas stopped playing and began a relentless assault of her body, bringing her pleasure up so fast that she practically screamed with it, shaking uncontrollably.

"Mmm..." Thomas said, gazing up at them again, wiping his mouth. "What a beautiful sight you are together."

He sat up, moving closer to claim Edith's lips for himself, kissing her passionately before moving his attention to Lucille, something close to predatory in his gaze.

"You stole all her pretty sounds from me, sister," he growled. "But I suppose I will be content with yours alone."

She felt Edith go tense as they kissed, the dizzy height of her orgasm wearing off and leaving uncertainty in its wake. It would not do to panic her.

"A moment," Lucille said, breaking away.

She carefully lay Edith down, stroking her hair and cheek, murmuring reassirances and kissing her softly as she moved above her, ending up on her hands and knees, legs parted to bracket Edith's hips.

"Like this," she said. "Come on. Now."

Edith gazed up at her, fear mixing with anticipation on her face as Thomas eased her underwear down and ran a hand over her from hip to knee.

"Beautiful," he whispered, moving closer, trousers abandoned. "Perfect."

Lucille cried out as he breached her.

It was an unusual position and it felt different to be taken from this angle, still half dressed. Or maybe that was the sight of Edith beneath her, lips parted in strange wonder.

She couldn't resist them, leaning forward, her heart leaping when Edith moved up to close the gap and she felt Thomas's cock twitch within her. He'd started out slow and careful, but he was growing desperate now, beginning to slam into her, hands tightening about her hips.

Lucille had to break away from Edith to gasp as he reached around to rub at her, his fingers occasionally slipping down to where they were joined. He liked to feel it sometimes, how well they fit together.

"Don't tease," she panted. She hadn't realised how desperate she was, how wet, aroused from every orgasm she'd given Edith and practically dripping now she had her brother's cock within her and her lover's squirming body beneath.

"Lucille..."

Her breath came in violent gasps, so close, so very close, Thomas buried so deep and moaning and Edith reaching down between her own legs. Another? How greedy.

"You like to watch?" she asked breathlessly and laughed when Edith blushed.

"It's... I don't know."

She would have taunted Edith a little more, but her words turned to cries in her throat, Thomas growling approvingly as she felt her climax rising, the ripples of it flowing through her, release after so long suddenly rushing forth and making her clamp down around her brother's length, greedily taking all he could give as he worked her through it, body shaking and sensitive, her moans mixing with his as he spilled and then with Edith's as she found one last climax by her own hand.

For a few minutes, none of them spoke, panting and falling into lazy kisses and caresses. Edith's mouth was soft and tentative, Thomas's familiar and gentle. She felt powerful somehow, strong, as though the sex had nourished her. Like some spell had been cast by the three of them together.

Edith finally left the bed, like a new foal, trembling a little and wrapping her dressing gown around her naked flesh.

"I... I am going to take a bath," she said.

Lucille tried to remain still after she'd gone, tried to hide, but could not resist when Thomas loomed above her, his face etched with concern.

"What are we going to do now? She knows."

Reaching up to cup his face, she didn't say anything.

She didn't have an answer yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er. Next time plot. Honest.


	14. Chapter 14

Lucille almost had to crawl out of the bed. Thomas had been rougher with her than she'd realised during the act. She would have a pleasant ache for a little while, a little bit of proof that it had really happened.

"I'll go and talk to her," she mumbled, pulling his trousers on out of convenience.

After all, he was right. Edith knew. And that made her potentially very dangerous.

The bathroom door was unlocked, which seemed like invitation enough to enter. The water was steaming in the chill air and giving Edith a strange appearance. Siren-like. Their own little Lorelei.

She was sitting up and hugging her knees, not moving even while Lucille dragged the chair from its place by the sink to be near her, making a horrid scraping sound against the floor.

Lucille didn't know what to say. Didn't know if touch would be wanted, even just a comforting stroke of her hair. She was faintly uncomfortable, physically, sticky between her legs and no doubt staining these trousers.

"You're not his sister," Edith said, her voice flat and toneless. "I've... I've been so stupid. You're his wife, aren't you? And that's why he never spent the night with me. That's why you hated me so much. It's why you were so angry after the post office."

She was weeping, her words choked around thick sobs. Lucille watched her passively, a little voice in the back of her head telling her that she ought to be glad. Wasn't this what she wanted? Edith corrupted and broken and despairing, crushed beneath her feet? Hadn't she wanted this?

Why did it feel so bad now she had it?

"It doesn't happen in real life," Edith was saying now. "Handsome young noblemen do not just marry people like me. Romance doesn't just happen like it did - like I thought it did. He... He doesn't love me. He never did."

"He does," Lucille protested, the words like acid in her mouth, a burning truth. "I see it in him."

"He only married me for my money."

"Yes. But..."

"But what? But I should be grateful for it? I should be glad that at least I won't die a spinster like everyone thought I would? I should be happy about my marriage to a bigamist? I should be glad that I've been taken away from everyone and everything I've ever known to be your... your pet? I should be satisfied to be second best, second place always, spending every night alone while you sleep in his arms, hoping that you might show me a little affection from time to time? I should settle for scraps of love?"

She seemed almost frightened, afraid of being punished somehow for this outburst, but plunging on regardless. The thrill of being reckless. Lucille knew it well. Two could play at that.

"I'm not his wife."

"Don't lie. I see it now. You planned it, didn't you? Easy money. Go to America where no-one knows you, act like brother and sister and snare a rich local, spirit her home and wait for her to die of sadness?"

Lucille grit her teeth, standing and pacing.

"I'm not lying."

"What are you then? His mistress? His whore?"

Snarling, Lucille lunged at her, gripping her chin to force her to look up, to look her in the eye and dare to call her a liar. Little fool. They'd been in love before she could walk and she dared to question it?

"I am his world. I am his first and last, his beginning and end. I am his sun and moon, his water, his wine, his everything. My body is the altar at which he worships. And he is God to me."

"What are you?"

She was trying to be brave, but her voice shook, her whole body trembling. Lucille moved back from her, going to the door and locking it, just a threat, hearing the water move behind her as Edith practically cowered in the bath. So vulnerable. It would be almost too easy to drown her, if she wanted to, if it came to that, snatching her ankles and holding her down. If it came to that.

"I am his sister," she said.

"No, you can't be, you... In front of me..."

"I am his sister. And we have always been this way. We only ever needed each other, only ever wanted each other. But then you came along and you fascinated him."

She could hear the ghosts suddenly. The wailing. The warnings. _Get out, get out, run, run, RUN..._ They were restless, trying to distract her, trying to stop her maybe.

Edith's chest heaved, the rabbit ensnared, looking desperately for an escape route while Lucille prowled about the room restlessly, always keeping her body between Edith and the door. Surely she would not be so stupid as to try the window. The fall would kill her.

"I decided I would try to understand. I would study you, like a pinned butterfly, until I knew what you had that enchanted him so. What was it about you? Not mere beauty, or sweetness, though you have both in abundance. No, there is something about you, a quickness, a passion, a strength. And that makes you interesting."

Her head whipped towards the door as she heard sudden hammering upon it, something too corporeal to be the ghosts.

"Lucille!" Thomas yelled from the other side. "Don't hurt her. Don't. We don't have to. Open the door. There has to be another way. Don't do it, please."

Why did he care? He never used to. He would cast his brides aside like old shoes. Again, Edith had somehow changed him, she'd made him different...

"What does he mean?" Edith asked as the hammering turned to slams, Thomas trying to break the door down. "What's he talking about?"

"Let's ask him, shall we?" Lucille said, viciousness seizing her, unlocking the door and letting her brother fall to the floor, still half-naked.

He was almost trembling as she gazed down at him, imperious in her anger. He'd come to save his wife. He didn't trust her not to kill despite what they'd just done. He didn't trust her. And that made her sick, made her want to give him a real reason to shiver before her.

"Go on, Thomas," she commanded. "Tell her. Tell her all of it. Tell her that she's half right, that we brought her here to die, though not from mere grief as she thinks. No, we haven't the time to wait for that, have we, dear brother? Tell her about the poison that we fed her every day, that you let her drink. Tell her the truth about her sickness. Maybe that she's not the first, what about that? Not even the second or third. Go ahead, list your wives, if you can even remember their names."

She was almost ready to throttle him when he looked away from her. Like he hadn't heard any of it. How dare he not listen?

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"Stay back!" Edith said, finally leaping from the bath to use it as a physical barrier, water cascading from her body. "Stay away. You tried to kill me."

"No," Thomas protested, looking to Lucille with pleading in his eyes. 

He wanted her to take responsibility like she always did, but not this time. No, this time the blame would be shared.

"You watched me drink it. You watched as I started to get sick, as it poisoned me."

"Well, yes, but I never actually..."

"But you knew! You knew what would happen. You knew that I would die a slow, painful death. You lured me in with your pretty speech and smiles and waltzing and you _knew_ that I was coming here to die."

"No, not you! Lucille, not her. Please."

Jealousy rose in her chest like a wave, the roar of it in her head almost deafening.

"Why shouldn't I?" she spat. "Because you love her?"

"No. Because you do too."


	15. Chapter 15

Laughter echoed around the room and Lucille took a moment to recognise that it was hers. The suggestion was so ludicrous that she couldn't help herself.

In love with Edith? Her? She didn't believe she'd ever heard anything more unlikely.

"Don't lie to yourself," Thomas said. "You know it's true. I see it in you."

Even having her own phrasing thrown back at her, even though he couldn't know what she'd said, wasn't enough to convince her.

"No," Lucille said firmly. "It's you that I love. It's only ever been you."

"I know. But maybe you can love both of us. I know I love both of you. It took me a while to realise it, but I do."

Oh, so that was it. He thought he could make her doubt her own emotions, make her believe that she truly did have feelings for Edith, and then he would have them both. His own little harem.

"Do I get a say in this?" Edith asked shakily.

She'd pulled a shawl over herself, hiding away, shivering in the cold air. Lucille gestured at her to continue. She might as well. The situation could hardly deteriorate further.

"Even if you... love me, either or both of you, how can I live with you? How can I trust you when you have lied and lied and lied to me? When you've tried to kill me? How can I be sure that you haven't had this very conversation with all of them when they found out? You're acting like I'm special, but you did that before and I can't trust..."

"You'll just have to have faith," Thomas said.

Lucille scoffed. Stupid. Too many dreams, that was Thomas's problem. That he could save her, could save the house, could save Edith. Always trying to be the martyr without sacrificing himself for it.

"That's who they are, aren't they? The ghosts. They were just trying to warn me and you... You were the one that killed them all."

She went very quiet for a moment, holding on to the edge of the bath.

"The baby..." she whispered.

"You can't leave," Lucille said, cutting her off. "I won't let you."

Edith tensed slightly at the threat, unable to keep her voice from breaking even as she tried to be brave.

"You can have my money. I don't care about it. Take it. That's all you want."

"But..." Thomas began.

"No," Edith said. "Let me finish. Take my money and fix the roof. You can't live like this, mopping up the rain and snow, trying to sweep the leaves out. You have to fix it. Use my inheritance to do it."

Lucille opened her mouth, but nothing came out but a slight sob.

The roof. A fundamental part of the house, a fundamental part of herself, and Edith wanted it fixed for her, wanted her money spent on Lucille's greatest desire.

"Why?" she managed to croak. "Why that?"

Edith shrugged. "It's what needs to be done."

_What needed to be done. How many years had she spent doing what needed to be done? Thomas needed to be cared for, needed to be loved. Mother needed to die. She needed to be patient in her imprisonment and wait to be rescued. They needed money, needed to lure wives, needed to kill them..._

_Edith needed..._

She frowned. Edith had needed to be corrupted. She had done it. Edith needed to be comforted from the ghosts. She had done that too.

Edith had not needed to know the truth. So why had she done that?

She blinked and found herself on the floor, her legs giving way beneath her. For the first time in so long, she was able to admit that she was afraid. Afraid that Thomas would abandon her, afraid that they would be discovered. Afraid that Edith would...

"You can't leave," she repeated, flat and dull.

Edith seemed to tower over them as she moved around the bath, cautious still but growing confident. The angel triumphant, goosebumps rushing over Lucille's skin as she gazed up at her.

"You tried to kill me."

Thomas started to speak but obeyed when she waved him into silence.

 _"You_ tried to kill me, Lucille."

The silence stretched for what seemed like days.

"Yes," Lucille finally managed, bitterness spreading on her tongue. "I hated you because you were taking him away and I could do so little to stop you."

"Past tense. So you do not hate me now?"

A shuddering breath. A long exhale. No, she did not hate Edith. When she looked into her heart, she knew it was so. But she knew that if she said it, the question would be why not. And she didn't have a response to that.

Edith was still the one pulling Thomas away from her. She was still dangerous to them. And they would need more money, another wife with enough capital to finalise the engine. But...

But yet the idea of not hearing her voice, not hearing her laughter, not talking with her every day, of never again feeling those lips pressed to hers... It was abhorrent to her somehow.

Her tears were huge and heavy, scalding her face as they ran down her cheeks.

"You can't leave. I don't want you to leave."

Edith seemed confused almost, a little frown on her face.

"I'm going to get dressed," she said, stepping over them. "And then I think you should tell me everything. From the beginning. And after that, I shall decide what I am going to do."

She was so calm. Some kind of survival instinct no doubt.

Lucille stared at the floor, the damp marks where Edith's feet had been, until Thomas hauled her upright.

"She'll stay," he whispered against her hair. "We'll make her stay."

Lucille clung to him, to the only safety she had ever known, and tried not to despair.


	16. Chapter 16

In this house, Lucille was queen. This was her domain, her word was law and she would fight for its existence.

Edith stood in the parlour like an empress, conquering, her hair loose and falling down her back, glowing gold in the firelight. Rapunzel, taking charge of the tower.

"Close the door," she said quietly as they entered, such gentle tones. "And sit down."

They wouldn't dare to disobey. She had clearly prepared herself to deal with them while Thomas had dressed with Lucille pacing up and down the room.

"She can't leave," he'd said, pulling on his best trousers since Lucille was not prepared to change out of his workaday ones. "The snow is too heavy and deep. She's trapped. We have the advantage, don't you see?"

"What advantage?"

"You," and he'd taken her hands. "My darling, you will speak to her. You will convince her to stay."

His kisses had not soothed her, agitation bubbling beneath her skin. Edith wanted the truth. Would demand it. And although they had always lied and misled and forged their way out of everything, she could not do it anymore.

She was tired. So horribly tired. The screaming haunted her dreams, her love pained her heart, and she had done so many awful things and soon Edith would know...

Thomas was wrong. She would not stay. She couldn't.

And maybe she would take Thomas away with her. Maybe she'd be left here all alone.

She could feel the tears falling down her cheeks as Edith gazed at her. She was so little, so delicate, but she was like marble too, strong and beautiful.

She turned from them and pulled out a large kitchen knife from behind the piano, resting it across her knees as she sat on the stool.

"You won't need that," Thomas said.

Edith gripped it tightly.

"I shouldn't," she said. "You're right. I should not have to be prepared to defend myself from my family. I should not look at my husband in fear. I should not be frightened of my sister-in-law. And yet I am. And with good reason. How many people have you murdered? Tell me."

"Five," Thomas said after a pause.

"Six," Lucille said at the same time.

He didn't look at her, reaching for her hand and finding it limp and unresisting.

"That was not your fault. He was sick. He would not have lived. He was born wrong, you know that, there was no way to save him."

Lucille felt a shudder go through her. Did he really think that she blamed herself for their child's death? No, she did not. The world, uncaring as it was, had taken her one chance for redemption from her. Robbed her of him. Left her with only pain and visions, only ghosts.

"I am not talking about him."

"Then... Then who?"

Edith's gaze was like a hot coal, searing her skin.

"Tell me," she said again. "Tell me their names and why you did it."

Lucille's tongue was leaden, her lungs clogged, opening her mouth but no sound coming out.

"We didn't have a choice," Thomas said. "It was survival. It was them or us."

Her words. The things she had taught him. The excuses they had whispered to each other in the dark.

_Everyone dies in the end. We need this. They will never accept us. It's better like this. Live together or not at all. It doesn't matter. She doesn't matter._

"I killed our father first," Lucille heard her own voice. "He broke our mother's leg in an argument and then I heard him talking about Thomas, how he was angry about something and I knew... I knew he would hurt us again. Hurt him. And so I poisoned his brandy and watched him choke to death. I was thirteen years old."

It did not feel like her speaking. Not her words, not formed in her mind, but raw truth falling from her lips.

"When we were young, Father would beat Lucille," Thomas offered. Like that was an excuse. Thousands of children were beaten by their parents and they did not grow up to be murderers.

"He would beat us both."

"No. You always took the blame. You always tried to protect me. You did always protect me."

Yes. From everyone but herself.

"You know what I did to Mother," Lucille said to Edith, whose expression was a strange blend of pain and horror. "You've seen her."

"Which one is she?"

She couldn't say it. Instead she raised one hand and placed it in the centre of her head, palm flat like a blade. Edith gasped.

"Why? She was your mother."

"She caught us. Together in bed. Naked. No-one could know. I killed her so we could be together, but they separated us anyway."

Thomas dropped her hand to wrap his arm around her. He was trying so hard to comfort her and she was grateful, but it didn't really help. This was her confession. It was supposed to hurt. It had to hurt or what was the point?

"Lucille was sent to an institution," he said. "Where she was starved and beaten and burned. It was the most awful place I have ever been."

There was a pause.

"Is that why would won't let me see you?" Edith asked. "Is that why you hide your body?"

Lucille sighed and shrugged Thomas's arm from her shoulder, undoing the laces of her corset. There was no point in hiding anymore. She'd just done that to prevent Edith from panicking, but now she could look.

A gasp. Yes, they were quite shocking, if she considered it. The cross-cross of white bands over her stomach and breasts, the round scars of the hot poker, the strange mishapen impact injuries. She turned, allowing Edith to see her back too, and then picked up a blanket from the chaise to wear. It was just the cold, she told herself. It was not fear or embarrassment. How lovely she had been, once, she thought.

"When I came of age, the first thing I did was free her from that awful place. I had to leave her there for six years."

Edith had tears in her eyes, but blinked them back, setting her jaw.

"And then you began hunting for money," she said. "Whose idea was it? Which one of you thought of it?"

Whose idea? Lucille struggled to recall. They had had so many outlandish ideas to get money. Starting a school. Armed robberies. The idea to marry came first, the idea of killing later. Had it been him or her who first said it? She couldn't remember.

"One wasn't enough," she said quietly. "We could not afford to keep a spouse. Another mouth to feed once the money was gone. That's all they would have been. We needed the money. We..."

"You killed them. You lured them in and you killed them."

"I cannot deny it."

Edith was trembling now, the mask beginning to slip. She was terrified of them. Sickened. And for good reason, for they were monsters.

"And the sixth?" Edith asked. "Your parents and three wives and who else?"

"No-one," Thomas said quickly. "We had a child and he died. That's what she meant."

Lies. More lies, so many...

"Lucille? Is that true?"

She stared at the floor, the carpet shifting before her eyes.

"We had a son," she said quietly. "And he was sick and he died. You've seen him. He's still here. But that's not who I meant."

"Please," Thomas said. "Please, don't."

"She deserves to know."

"What?" Edith demanded. "Who was it?"

A deep breath. Eye contact. She would not flinch, would not shy from this. The most important truth.

"Carter Cushing. Your father."

A beat of silence and then Edith flew at her.


	17. Chapter 17

She'd forgotten the knife and it clattered to the floor. Lucille made no effort to avoid the slaps. She deserved them after all. They barely registered.

But then Thomas was dragging her off, forcing her arms behind her back and pushing her to her knees. She sobbed helplessly, trying to escape his grasp, trying to twist free.

"Why?" she asked. "Why? You didn't have to hurt him..."

Thomas looked at her, not able to hide his resentment. Edith would not stay now. How could she? She'd have to be as mad as they were.

"We had already paid for the third cabin," Lucille said. "We were leaving with a new wife no matter what. We had to. We needed the money, your money. And your father tried to stop it. He... He discovered some evidence of previous marriages, of our past... He would have stopped you from coming here."

Edith wept, slumping on the floor. Thomas picked up the knife and threw it across the room out of harm's way.

"How did you do it?" Edith asked.

"You don't need to hurt yourself like this," Thomas said.

She turned to him, fury burning through her tears.

"I want to know. You saw his face, how awful it was. What did you do to my father?"

Lucille couldn't meet her gaze. She couldn't bear it.

"I was going to slit his throat," she said softly. "But instead I slammed his head against the sink. It broke, I remember. I was so angry and that made me stronger than I thought. He was a threat. I have spent my life getting rid of threats."

She did not feel guilt, not as such. He had been aging fast after all. Surely it was a kindness to do it, that he would not die at the end of a long illness. But maybe that was just an excuse. Maybe she'd been justifying this to herself too long.

Thomas had tried to reach out to Edith, to comfort her, but she shoved him away.

"Did you know, Thomas? Did you know what she was doing when you were telling me you loved me?"

"I do love you."

"You brought me here to die."

There was no argument for that. They had. And then all of this...

Edith took some shuddering breaths, getting herself under control. She looked ready to slay them both. It would probably be just. And then she could leave. She could be free. But she didn't. She was too good for that. Too different from them.

How arrogant she'd been, Lucille thought, to believe she could corrupt Edith so easily.

"What were you going to do?" she asked. "You had decided not to kill me, so what would you have done for money?"

Lucille didn't know. She wasn't sure.

"The engine is nearly complete," Thomas said. "We will be able to earn money again. Maybe. Assuming there is demand for clay or patent licences."

"And how much money will that bring in? Enough to live on?"

He hesitated. They didn't know. They couldn't be sure.

"I see," Edith said. "Dreams. Fantasies. Hopes. That's all you have. And you killed for them."

She stood up, wiping her eyes.

"They're in the basement, aren't they? Your wives."

Lucille nodded. They weren't even buried as such. They had sunk into the liquid clay there.

She remembered the first one, Thomas too squeamish to deal with the corpse and leaving Lucille to drag her to the lift and down, down, down into the dripping, leaking cellar. She'd heaved her into one of the mining vats and watched as she sank without trace.

The only body she hadn't dealt with was their son. At least he had spared her that. And it still pained her to think of him lying down there, not buried properly. But they had not paid for a funeral for the wives, inventing stories about their bodies being taken back to wherever they came from if anyone asked. And people didn't, generally. They were forgotten, all of them. But that meant no funeral for their boy. After all, who would separate a mother's body from her child's?

When she finally died, she wanted to go down there too, with Thomas. Even their bodies would rot entwined.

"I want to dig them up."

Lucille blinked as Thomas protested.

"No," Edith said, so commanding. "I will not have corpses under _my_ house."

Almost trembling, Lucille stood and pulled the blanket more firmly about herself, going to fetch a shovel from the outhouse.

"Stop," Thomas said as she returned, laying the blanket back on the chaise and shivering as the cold air rushed over her naked skin. "Both of you, this is ridiculous."

Edith looked at him, almost pitying.

"You don't hear them," she said. "You don't know the way they scream. I want them out of the house. We will bury them outside, properly, respectfully. And maybe then they will be at peace. I can do this for them at least."

Lucille didn't offer him the shovel. This was her responsibility. She led the way to the lift, descending into the red, cold basement with Edith by her side.

"Where are they?" she asked. "Which ones?"

No reply. Lucille stood in front of the nearest vat and began to dig, the slick, wet sounds of the clay echoing off the walls.


	18. Chapter 18

Lucille was coated in the thick, clinging clay within moments, her toes chilled and whole body spattered with it.

It was like blood, covering her, evidence of all her crimes.

She couldn't tell how long she had been digging before a hand appeared. Enola. She was the most recent, so she would be nearest the surface, but the others surely would not be much deeper. There was a kind of equilibrium where the flesh stopped sinking and became suspended.

The clay was so damp that it delayed decomposition. Enola had wasted, but her skin and hair were still there, her clothes even. Lucille lunged, grasping her hand tightly until she could reach under her arms, trying not to flinch as she pulled her up, feeling flesh cleaving from bones.

It was difficult and Lucille had to haul with all her strength until Enola came loose with a horrible squelching sound, a red monster dragged back from hell. She tried to be careful and lay her on the walkway with dignity, but she wasn't strong enough. The body hit the ground with a wet thud.

Behind her, Lucille could hear Edith weeping. This was almost her. She almost shared this same fate, this same vat. Maybe part of her wanted to pretend that there would not really be such recognisable bodies. Perhaps bones would be easier.

The other two wives were more difficult. They had rotted more for one thing, exposed skulls and ribs bursting from the tattered remains of their nightgowns. And it was dangerous. More than once, Lucille felt the clay begin to pull at her, threatening to drag her down and under. Part of her was tempted to just let go, to be drowned in it.

The second body separated into two pieces, snapping loudly at the base of the ribcage when she was being pulled out and the rest of her sinking out of sight. Lucille dragged out the torso, wiped her hand on her forehead, hair clogged with clay now, and reached right back in for what remained of the legs, her chest heaving as she worked.

It seemed to take her hours to find the last one. So thin, so almost gone. Part of that was how thin she had been when she died having suffered far longer than the others. A struggle and exhausting, but finally, she had all three wives lying out on the walkway. But the job still wasn't finished

Edith didn't say anything as Lucille walked to the furthest vat. She knew which one Thomas had used. Far away from his adopted mother.

The baby was not deeply buried. He was too small for that, too light. It was amazing he had sunk at all without weights.

The first sob escaped her when she recognised his hand. Her boy. Her little boy, his tiny, tiny body so cold as she pulled him out.

She couldn't help but cradle him despite the way his spine had erupted from his flesh, her yearning for her child just as strong as ever. Oh, if he had just lived. Maybe he would have made her better. Maybe he would have saved her. Maybe they would have been happy.

Her knees hit the ground hard and she wailed. It was too much. It was all too much. She couldn't live any more. She couldn't, she...

"Let go," Edith's voice, muffled and strange. "Lucille, you need to let go."

Her tears were falling red, no doubt leaving tracks in the clay down her face. And she didn't want to let go, she couldn't, not again.

Edith's hands were on her, gently but firmly unfolding her arms and taking her child's corpse from her reverently.

"He's beautiful," she said, like she was seeing the Christ child himself and not a malformed little creature, yet another victim of her and Thomas's twisted love.

"He should never have been born," Lucille said. "We should never have tried to make him live."

There were footsteps behind her, Thomas descending the steps from outside. He was almost blue with cold, his hair full of snowflakes. One look at her distress and he was crouched beside her, holding her close and letting her sob against his chest.

"I've dug graves for them," he said. "Though I still don't understand why you're insisting on this. Can't you just leave? Don't you see that you're torturing her?"

"I'm not leaving," Edith said simply. "This is my house. You are my husband, for better or worse. I am not leaving you to go back to using people and killing them."

"You'll be our gaoler, then? Punish us for our crimes?"

"We deserve to be punished," Lucille said, her voice dull and aching from her tears. "We've done terrible things."

"You have suffered enough."

No, she hadn't. She had killed and killed and never given it a second thought until Edith. Could she suffer enough to pay for all the blood on her hands?

Thomas wrapped her in his coat, not caring that she was getting it filthy. They would all need baths after this.

"We should bury them now," he said. "The snow will cover the moved earth overnight, hide them. And will that satisfy you?"

Lucille dared to look, her sister-in-law standing holding the tiny body of her son, the red clay staining her chest like her very heart was bleeding out.

"I don't know," she said. "But it will certainly be a good start."


	19. Chapter 19

Her teeth chattered even as she sweated, Thomas helping her move the bodies, a lantern swinging wildly in the wind where he'd hung it in the lonely tree and casting arcing shadows.

Three graves. Three wives. Pamela, Margaret, Enola... Thomas grunted heavily as he filled them in, his shirt soaked through by the swirling snow. It was strangely calming for Lucille to let herself get numb, to watch as the flakes melted on her flesh and dripped to the ground in red splashes.

She wasn't sure what was happening when Edith handed over the baby. She'd wrapped up warmly, of course, but her cheeks were still blooming pink in the harsh wind.

"Did you name him?" she asked.

Lucille blinked at her and looked at her son's corpse, papery eyelids and shrunken hands, more inhuman looking than ever in the uneven light.

"Thomas," she said quietly, her voice close to cracking. "I named him for his father."

The grave was so small she could hardly bear it, crouching down to lay him to rest properly. Poor sick child. It wasn't his fault. He didn't ask to be born.

And she felt more guilty for that than she did anything else. That she had tried to be happy. What kind of world would give her happiness after all she had done? How could she, a murdering monster who had corrupted the only good things in her life, be allowed that?

Thomas steered her inside afterwards, not talking to Edith as he pulled his sister up the stairs and into the bathroom, locking the door and setting the water to run.

"Come on," he said. "You're frozen almost to death."

"Good. It's what I deserve."

"Don't say that."

She didn't say anything more for a while, letting him pull off what pitiful clothes she was still wearing and ease her into the steaming water, watching it go red instantly. He slipped in behind her, legs pressed to either side of her hips and lips softly pressing into her shoulders.

"Lean back," he said softly. "Let me wash your hair. You look beautiful as a redhead, but I think I prefer your natural tones."

He was so gentle with her, slowly easing life back into her flesh, massaging her head carefully and teasing out her tresses. No doubt the pillows would still be stained red in the morning, but they had tried.

"Is that better?"

In answer, she leant back to kiss him, trying to chase only good things now. Even here he was gentle with her, his hands stroking up and down her arms carefully. She could feel fatigue beginning to set in, the labour of the past several hours making her drowsy as he helped her dry off.

But there was still something not right in the back of her mind.

"Do you still love Edith?" she asked.

He paused, the towel draped over her shoulders.

"Do you?" he countered.

A pause.

"Yes. But I hate her too. I... I don't know. It's confusing."

"I know."

And that made her consider something even more troubling.

"Is... Is that what it's like to love me? Hate and love all mixed up like that?"

He scoffed lightly, resuming his careful patting of her raw skin.

"Don't be ridiculous. I've never hated you. Never. It's impossible."

She could feel the prickle of tears in the corner of her eyes and tried to hold them back, to keep her voice steady.

"You could have been happy," she said. "If it wasn't for me and what I did. What I did to mother and you and all of them. You could have married a nice girl and had a whole group of children to inherit the house. All I've brought you is pain and death."

"No. That's not true. Who could have sacrificed more than you? Who could love me more than you do? No-one. I don't care that it's wrong. Darling sister, you are all I need in the world, you know that. You always have been."

He kissed her then, soft and gentle on her face and lips while her stomach rolled in worry.

He plaited her hair while she wondered if she could trust his words. She knew that he meant them, but she had had power over him since they were tiny children, had been his teacher in all that was wrong and right, had led him down this path.

Could he hate her? Would he know if he did? Or would he interpret everything that he felt towards her as love?

He was still planting kisses on her as this turmoil was flooding into her mind.

But there was no attempt at going further than kisses when they curled up in bed together, neither of them wanting anything more than to be near the other and try to feel a little more secure.

She knew that he loved her as fervently as she returned those feelings.

It had always been enough before.


	20. Chapter 20

Her body was so cold... She must be encased in ice, a heavy weight upon her chest, unable to even cry out.

She could distantly hear Thomas speaking to her, saying her name urgently, and she managed to wrench her eyes open and gaze up at him, trying to sit up and hold him.

"No, no. Darling, you rest. You're freezing. I'll get you more blankets."

She didn't want him to leave but everything ached and all she could do was lie back, and feel awful. But she must have slept because she woke up when she heard Edith's voice.

And wasn't that a cruel thing for the world to do? Rouse her to hear the words of her conqueror.

"I expect the men are snowed in," she was saying. "There's no sign of them."

"Good," Thomas said. "I wouldn't have gone out today anyway."

He was stern, angry, only just restrained and there was a horrible pause.

"Is she dreadfully ill?" Edith asked.

"Yes. You saw to that. The cold is in her bones and lungs. I feared her dead this morning."

So overdramatic. Lucille isn't even sure that she could die. Not so easily as this. No, this is just another problem to be overcome and she will do it. She always did.

Still, she was barely lucid as Thomas nursed her, watery porridge and little sips of warmed milk, cuddling close to her in an effort to heat her up, to work some life back into her. Somehow she doubted she'd ever be warm again. Contact with the wives had passed over this deathly chill. She would be a living corpse, frozen and stiff.

"Dead, Thomas," she caught herself mumbling.

"Who is?"

Why couldn't he understand? It was so important that he understood.

"Me. I'm dead. For years, maybe. Like the house."

"No! No, darling, you're not, you're safe here with me and no-one will ever hurt you again."

Her tears were hot. How could it be? How could her body produce something so warm? Thomas felt like an inferno, the places where he touched her aching as though burned. Was this her curse too? That his flesh would roast her like the fires of hell?

She entered a limbo of waking and sleeping, never sure what hour of the day it was. And Thomas was always there. He must have left sometimes for he was always clean, so he had to be bringing fresh water.

It didn't occur to her that it might be Edith until she saw her, tray in hand, food on it for Thomas and a bowl of porridge. She was helping. Why was she helping?

Lucille turned her face away when Thomas tried to feed her, certain that it must be full of poison, or worse that Edith wanted to make her well only to torture her all the more.

"You must eat," Thomas said, his voice distorting and suddenly she was not in bed but trapped within her own memories, the awful smell of blood and bile, the metal in her mouth, those awful words...

He had pity for her and stopped, instead trying with a little of his own dinner. Yes, that would be safe. Edith would not poison Thomas. She wanted him for herself. Or... Or did she? It was so difficult to think, her thoughts tangled and muddled, confused feelings of hatred and desire blending until she wasn't sure what was happening in her mind.

Boiled potato tasted of nothing, but she could see Thomas's distress and forced herself to chew and swallow. He smiled at her, some sunlight as reward. That smile... She had watched it grow from the smallest toothless grin through the full cheeks of childhood and the early surety of adolescence and then suddenly her little Thomas had been a man grown, the start of lines around his eyes. How handsome he had become.

She reached for him, arms around his neck, not even minding the heat of him in favour of closeness.

"Wait," he murmured. "One moment."

There was a faint clink as he put the plate down on the floor and then he was easing her properly into bed, holding her close and letting her press kisses to his face. She was filled with terror that this would be the last time, the last chance she would have to be with him, and so she was bold, touching him with purpose and weakly protesting when he pulled away.

"You're too ill for that. Here, just let me hold you. You're safe and you will be well."

He kept speaking to her, soft reassurances and vehement promises that soon, soon he would touch her intimately again but she had to get well first. She fell asleep in his arms, feeling pleasantly warm for the first time in days.

It didn't last. That night her chill became a fever and she sobbed with the pain, gulping cold water even as Thomas begged her to be careful, pushing him away and shoving down the blankets, ripping off her sweat-soaked nightgown and lying in agony, her body trying to boil her from the inside.

And yet that too passed. She woke with the afternoon sun coming through the cobwebbed window, a strange feeling like waking from a dream, so remembering something half-forgotten.

"Thomas?" she croaked.

He was dozing in the convalescent chair but woke immediately.

"Lucille?"

"I... I feel better today."

He laughed and she wondered what was so funny. Was this the first sense she had made in days? She felt certain that she had been expressing herself clearly, but perhaps not.

"Here, drink this. I think it will take time for your voice not to ache "

Water tasted like heaven, the cool liquid flowing down her throat and chest, soothing. Food was even better, though it hurt to swallow.

And Thomas... He tasted best of all, his fingers moving on her flesh as promised, making her shudder with delight as she climaxed and he lay beside her, kissing her gently, like they had when they were young.

"Will you come downstairs today?" he asked. "Are you well enough?"

The mere thought of leaving the room terrified her.

"No, I will stay here and rest some more."

He nodded but with sadness in his eyes, but how could she?

How could she go into what was now Edith's domain?


	21. Chapter 21

Lucille planned her retreat carefully. She had to find somewhere that Edith wouldn't dare go. Her own room was not safe. Edith had been bringing supplies. It was not safe.

She moved when Thomas wasn't there to stop her, outside with his engine now that the snow had thawed slightly. She gathered blankets and clothes, bundling them together and rushed out, heading for the stairs up to the attic room. She would retake her childhood refuge and find safety there.

The lift clattered behind her and she started running, fleeing, but her body was too weak. Her illness had sapped her strength.

"Lucille?"

She managed to get round the corner, dropping her bundle and putting her hands over her ears. The ghosts had never come for her during the day, they couldn't hurt her...

"Lucille."

A hand touched her wrist and she whimpered, eyes flashing open to find Edith looking up at her, concern in her face.

"Lucille, come downstairs."

She would _not_ take orders. Never. Without a word, she snatched up her things and headed for sanctuary.

"You're making Thomas very unhappy."

That almost made her pause. She didn't want to hurt him, of course she didn't, but something deeper in her mind told her not to believe. This was a trick. Edith was using her emotions to manipulate her.

It's what she would have done.

She closed the attic door firmly, putting the latch that had restrained them as children into place, sliding to the floor and feeling tears on her cheeks again. How could she have any more to weep? Surely she would run out eventually.

A tapping sound from the other side and then Edith's voice.

"I want to talk to you," she said gently. "I want to hear your side of it, all of it, what you wouldn't say to Thomas. I know you want to protect him, but you can't keep it bottled up inside forever."

Lucille shook her head, even though she couldn't be seen.

"Maybe I'll understand."

"You can't!" Lucille snapped. "How could you possibly understand? How could you know what it is to knowingly kill, Edith? I doubt you've so much as said a cruel word in your life."

"Explain to me then. I want to know."

Lucille stubbornly stayed silent, waiting until she heard footsteps leaving. Only then did she feel able to set about building a sort of nest from her blankets, the uncomfortable hard floorboards serving to remind her that she deserved nothing better.

Thomas came and pleaded with her, of course. She let him in. This room was her heart, she would die if Thomas was not allowed in.

Still, she was cruel and she knew it, refusing to respond when he asked her to come downstairs, to have dinner at the table. He told her Edith's money had arrived, that she could have any delicacy she wished if she would just come down. Could he not see? She did not deserve such treatment. She didn't deserve food at all. She ate, yes, but only because otherwise she would starve to death.

This was her punishment, laid out by herself. A long, dull wait to die. She would grow old up here. She would watch her hair go white and her skin grey. She would notice Thomas's love fading. And eventually she would die and be buried with the brides. Then they could take their revenge in the next life.

She didn't say such things. It would only upset him.

Edith was not easily cowed either. Every day, she would bring food, tapping on the door. And then she would say something, just one thing, about the world outside.

"I've planted some daffodils outside the front door. They'll look beautiful when they flower."

"The engine is working, it's harvesting clay."

"I bought some new piano music. When you're ready, maybe you can come down and play it."

Lucille would hear the tap and scurry to the door, pressing her ear against it to listen to her footsteps receding. Only once she was sure she was alone would she fling the door aside and snatch the food and water bowl. Clean water every day, so she could wash, tossing it out of the window afterwards.

It became normal. Thomas visited every night and though she would happily be kissed and caressed, would have him enter her, she refused to let him sleep there. She did not deserve to have his arms around her in the night.

For the first weeks, he tried to withhold sex in an effort to force her to leave the room. Though that pained her, her will was stronger than his. All it took was opening the door nude after two weeks for him to break, dropping to his knees immediately to kiss her abdomen. Even though the floor was harsh against her back, the feeling of reuniting was too good for her to care, drowning in kisses afterwards.

Months passed. She could tell from the view outside that spring had finally arrived, the lonely tree sprouting blossom. Had it ever done that before? She'd never noticed. She fancied that maybe it was the wives' doing, that they were celebrating Edith's triumph by making the tree bloom. She was a barren twig in comparison, she knew it.

And then she began to hear men's voices.

At first she thought it was her father's ghost, finally making an appearance. He'd never bothered before, didn't care enough to haunt her. Carter Cushing too, perhaps he'd finally made it across the ocean.

She couldn't make out their speech, no matter how hard she pressed herself against the door.

And soon there were dozens of them, and banging and clattering sounds, loud laughter for hours and hours. They arrived and left on schedule.

"Who are the men?" she asked Thomas. "The men that I hear. What are they doing in the house?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you."

She bristled at that, banishing him immediately.

"You could come out and see for yourself," he said as she slammed the door in his face.

Edith had forbidden him from taking about it. No doubt these men were bringing her things from New York, her modern furniture. She would be disposing of everything Allerdale, she would be changing it, making it hers...

Bitter tears made pock-marks in the dust on the floor. She had tried so hard. She had tried to save it, to pretend there was something worth saving from the Sharpe line besides cruelty and greed and incest.

She had tried to trap Thomas in its web, its cocoon, keeping him in the old clothes and the old house with the old furniture. She could see it now, that he would leave her. The outside world was calling. He would leave her.

On a Wednesday, apparently no different to any other, the men did not come. It was strange. Normally they only took one day off, Sundays. She had learned to keep track of the days by noting the empty ones. They were finished then and Allerdale changed forever. The butterfly emerging, beautiful and radiant while the moth lay dead.

A tap at the door. Edith bringing food.

Lucille hurried to listen. It would be the final nail, to hear the revelation of Edith's victory over her.

"The roof repairs are finished, Lucille."

Her heart skipped a beat.

With trembling fingers, she opened the door.


	22. Chapter 22

Lucille stepped out of her haven for the first time in weeks, bare feet on the cold floorboards as she stumbled forwards in disbelief. The chasm, the great open mouth that had made the house breathe, was gone, replaced by new wood and plaster and paint. New slates outside, probably.

For the first time since her return from the asylum, there was no rushing wind through Allerdale, no rain or leaves or dying birds falling down upon the hallway.

She took hold of the bannister, still slightly rotten but no longer damp with it, and looked all the way down to the ground floor. The evidence of workmen was still there, tools and ropes and ladders all waiting to be collected. Without that, there was little indication that there had ever been something needing mended on the upper floor.

Her legs grew weak and she fell to her knees, hands upon the floor as if to commune with the house she had nearly tried to abandon. Would it yet speak to her even though she had retreated into one room? Would its pained groans and sighs still echo?

She had barely looked at Edith, though of course she was standing nearby, waiting for her to speak. Doing so was a challenge. Some days she didn't even speak to Thomas and her voice felt rusted and seized like an unused waterpump.

"It looks like it did before," she managed. "Before we left."

"I found sketches in the library of how it used to look," Edith said quietly. "I... I wanted it to be just right."

She sat down on the floor, close but not too close, like she was trying to help some kind of frightened animal. When had this happened? She was the little rabbit in the trap, the pinned butterfly, and yet here she was with all the power, being careful not to frighten but to soothe.

"You don't have to come down if you don't want to," she said, gentle and soft. "But I know it would make Thomas very happy if you did."

Jealousy reared up out of habit, suspicion too.

"That's why you're doing this," Lucille said bitterly. "To please him."

Edith was silent for a moment, gazing away when Lucille dared to glance across at her, serene and beautiful.

"No. That's not why at all. I love him and I want to make him happy, but that is not all I want. I have had a lot of time to think and consider and try to come to terms with the past."

The whorls in the woodgrain of the ballustrades seemed to distort and blur as Lucille stared at them, Edith's words rolling over her in waves. Threatening to drown her.

"I don't think I can ever forgive you for what you did to my father. You murdered him in cold blood and I will never be able to fully come to terms with that. You killed three innocent women and your own parents. But..." And here she heaved a shuddering sigh, voice growing thick with held-back tears. "But when I think of all you have suffered..."

"I don't need your pity," Lucille spat, hunching in on herself.

"I don't offer it. I... I just want to understand."

"There's nothing to understand. I needed things, I killed for them. I needed safety, I killed my father. I needed Thomas, I killed my mother. We needed money, I killed Pamela and Margaret and Enola. We needed you..."

"You killed my father," Edith finished for her.

It was strange, the acceptance she was showing. A fat tear rolled perfectly down her porcelain face, but otherwise she was restraining her emotions and being almost disturbingly rational.

Lucille sighed, turning away.

"You want to save me, is that it? You want to tame the monster?"

"You're not a monster, Lucille."

Her laughter echoed now, the new ceiling giving it something to bounce from.

"I murdered my parents and poisoned my sisters-in-law and I fuck my brother. What other word is there but monster? I ought to be in a cage. I should be locked up to keep everyone safe. Is that what you want to do? Lock me up here, trap me in the house?"

"Is there anywhere you would rather be?"

It was a shock, a stab. So it was true, then. Edith did plan to keep her here, to monitor her. But then again, where else would she go? The house was everything, Thomas was everything and both had sweetly imprisoned her long before Edith had arrived...

"I could throw you down the stairs," she said quietly, almost shocked to hear her own voice. "I could make it look like an accident. I've been shut away for weeks, why would I come out now?"

"But you won't do that," Edith said, with a certainty that made Lucille burn. "Because killing me won't get you anything. I have taken precautions. My money is secure and only I can access it. Thomas sleeps in your bedroom, so my death would only sour your love with suspicion. You only kill when you need something and I know you need me alive. You did not mean that threat. That was fear talking."

Lucille found her breath growing short, a horrible tightness in her chest making it hard to keep air in her lungs. She had always had the upper hand before. This was new and frightening.

"Why would I need you?"

She resisted the urge to flinch away as Edith moved a little closer.

"Because you need help. Because I will listen. I will not turn my head away and pretend not to see the ghosts. And I... I feel for you, Lucille, very deeply. Perhaps it is not love, perhaps it is something else. I want you to talk to me. When is the last time you could talk openly to someone else?"

Hadn't she been asking herself that same question not so long ago? There was Thomas of course, but Edith was right. Part of her would always be six years old, eight, twelve, singing lullabies to disguise the shouting downstairs, inventing stories to explain her bruises, telling him that everything would be well even as it was not so. She could not talk to him about the worst of it. It would mean admitting that sometimes she couldn't protect him.

"Would you like to take a bath?" Edith asked when she didn't reply. "It's been some time since you had hot water. I already set the boiler running downstairs."

Lucille blinked. Though she had kept clean with the washbasin, a real soak sounded divine. She could always retreat again afterwards.

She managed to haul herself to her feet and follow Edith down a level to the bathroom. How strange everything was. The same and yet subtly different, little hints of Edith strewn about the place. A robe on the back of a chair, a different kind of soap, dried lavender flowers...

Edith set the water running, the clanking of the pipes feeling almost like a welcome, waiting for the water to run clear and crushing a handful of the purple buds over the surface. The delicate scent rose with the steam as Lucille pulled off her nightgown and stepped in, knowing instinctively that Edith had no intention of leaving.

She had not realised how grimy she had really become hiding away. The heat of the water turned her skin pink and a little rubbing began to lift layers of dead cells from her legs and arms, the areas she had neglected all this time.

Edith's touch made her jump, but she was only unplaiting her hair, setting it loose and flowing. She was trying to be helpful, soothing.

Almost floating in the water, Edith's fingers massaging her scalp gently, Lucille closed her eyes and began to speak.


	23. Chapter 23

"My earliest memory is being afraid. I don't remember what I was frightened of. But I remember hiding my fear, taking Thomas's hand to reassure him, telling him that nothing bad would happen. I lied, of course. Bad things always happened. The only question was whether I let them happen or fought back."

She shifted a little in the water, feeling its warm caress over her skin. She had missed this.

"I don't remember him being born. Sometimes I would wonder how he came about. How I came about. Our parents hated each other. Sometimes I believe that we were a transaction. Consummation of the marriage for the express purpose of siring an heir. How disappointed they much have been when I was born and they had to try again. But then I think of the time between our births and I wonder if Father... If he forced her. It would explain why she hated us so much."

Edith let out a sharp little exhale at that, her fingers slipping for just a second.

"Does that shock you? A mother who hates her children? Does it seem dreadfully unnatural to you, Edith?"

To her credit, she took the challenge in her stride. Such discussions were practically the only way they communicated.

"Of course. Resenting, perhaps I could understand, but the cruelty..."

Her finger had drifted to an old scar on Lucille's shoulder, running along it gently.

"She beat you, didn't she?"

"She beat Thomas too. He says she didn't but he knows that's a lie. He thinks he is soothing me, pretending that I could always protect him. As if I don't remember what Mother and Father did to him..."

Her hands reflexively clenched beneath the water, the memories enough to fuel her rage even now.

"Thomas was frightened of loud noises. I remember him crying after a nightmare once. All he would tell me was that he had heard a dreadful noise. Three days after that, our father returned home from a business trip and Thomas trembled and cried. 'The noise,' he kept saying. 'The noise, the noise.' Eventually I realised he meant the sound of Father shouting. He had a deep, booming voice, never speaking anything that could be shouted. We saw him so infrequently that the sound was enough to frighten little Thomas. What excellent instincts he had.

"I remember being dragged out for Father to inspect us. Inspect Thomas more accurately. I didn't matter to him. I was worthless, useless, unable to inherit. Thomas was disappointing and weak. And of course, all of these failings were to be punished out of us. He only came up to the nursery once. Thomas was braiding my hair for me. A stupid girls' thing to do, our father said. He made him cut it all off."

That had been one of two haircuts which haunted her. Poor Thomas had been wracked with guilt even though it wasn't his fault. They'd been nine and seven and he had cried as the scissors did their clumsy work, felt the sting of Father's hand afterwards for being so emotional.

And of course the other was when she was taken away to...

But she would get to that part later.

"Thomas could never live up to his expectations. No-one could. He demanded a perfect child without giving any means to attain it other than beatings. I knew I needed to protect Thomas. Even when we were small, he tried to hide the evidence from me because he knew how upset and angry I would become. There was no way he could disguise the bruises on his neck though."

A splash as Edith dropped the soap she had been lathering.

"He... He choked you?"

"Only Thomas. It was a special punishment for him. I didn't even matter to Father enough for him to want me dead. The feeling was not quite mutual."

She waited for Edith to resume washing her hair before continuing, trying to get to the killing quickly lest she fall back into too many cruel memories.

"I had noticed that Father grew angrier and angrier. The mines were almost depleted, at least as far as safe surface mining is concerned. Money grew short. Staff were dismissed en masse. Arguments between our parents were never far apart, but one night was different. I tried to cover Thomas's ears, tried to keep his head pressed to my chest, my little budding breasts that I was so proud of, and I kept singing and singing. I didn't want him to hear.

"But then the crunch. And the scream. And Father's voice yelling, telling me to get down there. I had to kiss Thomas sweetly and tell him it would be well, tell him not to go downstairs no matter what he heard, that I would be back soon if he just slept.

"Mother was on the floor, bleeding, broken. I wish I could tell you that I felt pity but I... I felt nothing."

Lucille twisted round to look into Edith's face.

"Do you understand what I mean? I felt empty. My mother lay before me, weeping in pain, and I could not summon even the slightest hint of pity for her. I helped to push the bone back into place while she screamed in agony and all I wanted was for her to be gone, to be silent.

"I bound her leg as best I could and helped Father to carry her up the stairs. It was hard work. She was not a small woman. We put her to bed and then he sent me out to get the doctor, all alone in the dark, my mother's blood still on my hands.

"He was very kind to me, the doctor. He told me how right it was that I had gone to him, that I was a good girl. Things I had never heard before. Of course, then he heard the excuses for the injury from both my parents and looked at the wound and he knew... He knew it was a lie. The accident they described could not have caused such a break. He looked at me so sadly as he left, told me to take care of myself and Thomas. I think he could tell what we went through. Sometimes I wonder if he could have done more to help us.

"I killed Father a month later. He pawned a lot of Mother's jewellery to pay for the elevator and the convalescent chair. It was her fault, he said, so she would pay for it. He set me to work looking after her. He lived in the library. And then he realised that he could make use of me as well as a sort of replacement maid. I would fetch his meals, his brandy, cigars, anything. And that was good, for a while. Mother could not bother Thomas and I, unable to propel herself around. Father would fall into a stupor before ten o'clock. We were braver then, not even pretending to sleep in separate rooms. We drew on the walls. We were freer than ever before.

"It couldn't last. Father had one of his turns, demanded that Thomas and I sit and eat with him, that he could inspect his heir. The fear in Thomas's face... I couldn't bear it. And the way Father looked at him, so cold and disappointed, seizing his wrist and talking of how easily he could snap it, how all the bones in his body would break like twigs right up to his scrawny neck... I decided then that the risk was too great. He had hurt Mother beyond repair. I would not let him hurt Thomas.

"And it was so... easy. I barely planned it. I knew where the rat poison was. I had access to the brandy. I used enough to kill a thousand rats and even that I feared might not be enough.

"He downed his first glass. I poured another. He was a little suspicious, since normally I had to be ordered to, but took it. And then he began to choke. It was sudden, coughing up blood and gargling out words. 'Little bitch,' he said. 'What have you done?' And I laughed. I was triumphant. I had ended him, I had stopped him ever hurting us again. He fell forwards out of his chair and I rolled him onto his back, held him there to make him suffocate, to make him know that I had done it and done it deliberately.

"Afterwards, I made him slump, like he had fallen and I poured away the rest of the poisoned brandy. I went upstairs and slipped into bed beside Thomas, told him that Father would not bother us any more. He was confused, but I think he knew what I had done. He kissed me, hard. I had killed the monster from his nightmare.

"When the doctor came with the constable the next day, he looked me in the eye and said Father had clearly died of too much alcohol. He knew. He knew what I had done. But he did nothing. Not then anyway."

She realised that Edith had finished washing her hair and stood to rinse it, feeling the fresh water cascade down her back. Such long hair she had now. Thomas preferred it that way, so different from her shorn locks from so long ago.

"Will you come downstairs?" Edith asked as she dried off.

Lucille hesitated. She still did not feel ready.

"My story is not finished. Come tomorrow and I will tell you more of it."

She seemed upset. Then again, the tale was a sad one. Or maybe she had hoped that Lucille would have changed her mind and agree to go down.

"I shan't tell Thomas you have been out."

"Oh, he'll realise. I am so clean. He will know. And then he shall be terribly cross with us both."

Edith smiled sadly.

"I'm afraid that will hardly be a change for me of late," she said.

Lucille tried hard not to worry about what exactly that meant as she retreated into her little nest.


	24. Chapter 24

Lucille plaited her own hair while it was still wet, a great rope of it. Thomas was better at this particular task, but it would just get in the way otherwise.

It had been good to talk to Edith, she thought. Like confession. Her sins were not gone, not washed away by mere bathing, but the telling of them made her feel better in some strange way.

She almost wanted to write them all down and then rip up the paper, throw the scraps out of the window. It wouldn't help, it wouldn't undo any of it, but sharing her secrets had lifted her burden.

Then again, where would she find enough paper for that.

Still, for the first time in months, she felt a glimmer of something like hope. Not for salvation but for forgiveness. If Edith could forgive her, perhaps she could get better. Perhaps she could be free from her past rather than caught in it. A hopeful thought, however unlikely, was more than anything she had had of late.

Was Thomas's imminent visit wanted or not? Even up to hearing his knock, his voice, she was not sure. What would his reaction be, she wondered as she opened the door. Even from his face, that she knew better than her own, she could read nothing. Did that mean he was closed to her?

She stepped back as though afraid. Afraid that he would be angry or upset. Afraid that this would be a larger wedge between them.

"Did you enjoy your bath?" he asked, closing the door. What tone was that? Not accusatory. Not harsh either. Almost dangerously mild.

"Did Edith tell you?"

He nodded, fiddling with one of his broken automatons. It was a ballerina figure, missing what would have been an outstretched leg and twirling uncontrollably on her stand. There was probably a cog or a washer missing in it that ought to have controlled the speed. Thomas span and span it with one finger, not meeting her gaze.

"She said you were pleased by the roof repairs but did not feel you could come down yet."

"She is correct."

"Why not? Why do you feel you have to hide up here?"

And now he looked at her, hurt, an expression she had dedicated her life to removing and had failed spectacularly to banish. It was awful to know she was the cause of it now. He just wanted her back, he just wanted her out of this room, but she was not _ready._

"You might as well ask a moth why it hides in its chrysalis," she said, fussing with her blankets.

"That implies change," he said, pacing. "I don't want you to change."

She laughed at him. She couldn't help it.

"Yes, you do. You have always loved change. You want to explore and to invent and create. And that is good. I see that now. And I want it too. I don't want to stay like this. Jealous. Scared. Violent. I want to be happy."

"Then be happy! Leave this room and come out, be with us, be with me. I am starved of you. I can hardly sleep without you there."

"You have Edith."

"Edith is not you! I don't... I don't want to talk about it. Not here. I just want you to come out."

He did still need her, she could tell that was true. He needed the girl, the woman, who had always chased away his nightmares and tried to aid his ambitions. But that security was a cage, one she had built for him. She was trying to free him, to free them both from the past that they might go forwards. Why couldn't he see that?

"Come here," she said, opening her arms, the musty smell of her overworn nightgown blending with the fresh scent of soap and lavender.

She enveloped him in her embrace, holding him close to soothe him as she had done so many times before.

"I am clearing my mind," she said gently. "And I am not finished. I need to strip it away, all the pain and death, I need to break through those layers so that only good things are left. So that they can come to the surface. Do you remember when we first returned here? How passionate we were, how full of hope before the real horrors? That is what I want to get back to. You and I together and Edith too. We will not just stay here, rotting with the house, we will fix it and grow."

"I have been suggesting such things for years," he said, his reproach almost lost against her chest, warm breath against her skin.

"I know. But I was afraid. Afraid that you would move too quickly for me. That you would find someone better and leave me here."

Cruel. Shifting the blame. Yet more proof that she was not ready to come out yet. He gripped her tighter, looking up into her face.

"Better," he repeated. "There are none better than you."

"What about Edith?"

The only other to have shared Thomas's bed and heart, surely she was elevated above.

"Edith is different. Not better."

"And different is what we needed."

She should have let him keep talking, keep asking his questions. She should have made him understand that she was undergoing a subtle but vital metamorphosis. It was not to punish him, but he was too dangerous to live with during the process. It was not his fault that she could not trust her mind or her mouth around him. A lifetime of habit had made her too careful, too restrained around her dearest love, her fears for his safety outweighing what she knew would benefit him.

She should have explained that.

But instead she kissed him, long and full, wrapping her legs around him and rolling her hips upwards.

"I promise, I will come out soon," she whispered. "We will share a proper bed again. You and I, without a single fear. Edith too, when she wishes it."

"Careful," he said, his voice dropping as he began to unbutton his shirt. "Or I shall be the jealous one."

His eyes raked over her, still covered, the thin material doing little to disguise her body. Flesh he knew every inch of.

"She is lovely though," Lucille said thoughtfully. "So shy. So ashamed of her own pleasure but so greedy for it."

"And who taught her to be like that?" Thomas asked, standing to remove his trousers and under things, his cock thick and heavy with desire.

"I couldn't say."

His eyes glittered as he lay naked over her, running a hand all the way up her leg, her outer thigh, just stroking it to send shivers over her entire body.

"I think I know. Someone who also loves such things. One who knows how to tease and to give, how to drive pleasure higher. With gentle touches and warm praise and..."

Lucille silenced him with a kiss, needing more, needing him.

"Might I remove this?" he asked, tugging at her nightgown and pulling it over her head as soon as he had permission, gazing down at her once more, her fresh-clean skin.

"So beautiful," he breathed. "Always."

He was always so attentive in moments like this, kissing his way down her body, his hair tickling her and begging to be gripped and pulled, her fingers tightening as he skimmed over the slight swell of her lower stomach and down between her legs.

The first pass of his tongue had her gasping. How could he even bear to be so intimate with her when she was hurting him so much? When she refused to be with him the way he wanted?

She couldn't allow this for long. She needed to see his face, needed to be in his arms. She pushed and sat up, scrambling into his lap and wrapping her legs around his waist.

"Like this," she whispered, basking in his look of adoration, crying out as he pushed into her.

She never felt more complete. She did sometimes wonder if they were two halves of one soul. Surely that was the only explanation for why she still burned for him.

He gave her such power, letting her control the pace, his hands so warm on her hips and shoulders so firm under her grasp.

A long time ago, they had been in this very position almost everywhere in the house. She wondered at his strength. She was hardly small, easily close to him in height, and yet he never complained about her weight.

She was speeding up, feeding on his every sound, feeling her own pleasure building but with no desire to rush to finish. She wanted to stay like this for as long as possible.

Alas, nothing could last forever.

"Lucille..." he sighed. "Please."

"What do you need?"

She didn't have to ask. It was written in his eyes that he wanted the sensation of her climax, the way her body would shudder and convulse around him.

Well, it would be cruel to deny him and she was learning not to be cruel.

She kissed him as she reached between them, rubbing at her flesh to begin the chase, feeling it through every cell and she grew closer and closer, frantically trying to give him what he wanted before he spilled.

It was not the first time in their lives that they had climaxed at the same moment, moans blending together, but Lucille thought it a good omen. A blessing on her newfound purpose.

"I love you," she murmured as Thomas kissed her neck, his softened cock still held within the warmth of her body. "But you must allow me to do this."

She felt the sigh against her skin.

"I merely hope that you feel ready soon. I miss you everywhere. Playing the piano. Singing. Writing letters. Running the whole household. But if you say you must do this, then you must, even if I dislike it."

It physically hurt to tell him that he couldn't stay with her. They had to be strong and perhaps that meant growing separately for a short time. They had always been tangled vines. She needed a little sunshine of her own, a little cultivation. She had to share her deepest, darkest thoughts, for then they couldn't hurt her anymore.

"Be kind to Edith," she said as he prepared to leave, only his trousers pulled on as a nod to modesty.

"I am."

"She is unhappy."

He sighed, running a hand through tangled hair.

"Are you asking me to sleep with her?"

What a question. That hadn't been what she meant at all. Of course, technically since she was his wife then they ought to but...

"No. Not until I come out."

He looked at her a little oddly, the hint of a smile around his lips.

"I look forward to that day."

She locked the door behind him and flopped onto her blankets, her body still tingling.

Soon. Soon she would be ready to go back to him properly, to be part of their family in daily life and in bed too. But before such sweet sins, confession was necessary.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not supposed to take this long. I'm very sorry.

When Edith knocked the next day, Lucille almost didn't open the door. The night had stolen some of her bravery, had made her frightened again. She had justified her actions all these years while knowing them to be wrong and to submit to Edith's quiet judgement was almost more than she could bear.

"I have a gift for you," came the soft voice from outside.

"What kind of gift?"

Thomas would have teased. He'd have told her to open the door, that it was a surprise and she must give in to be allowed to see it. But Edith was gentler. No uncertainty was necessary.

"You've been wearing that nightgown so long. I thought you might like a new one."

Lucille looked down at herself, the billowing fabric gone thin and grey from overuse. How long had it been since she'd had new clothes?

"It's Mother's," she said, crouching by the door, trying to look through the keyhole.

She could make out Edith's hand, her delicate fingers holding something soft and cream, the yellow silk of her dress filling the rest of the tiny field of vision. Cream and butter.

"All my clothes are Mother's," Lucille said. "From when she was young. Stitched and restitched and patched. No-one dares point out how old-fashioned they are. Or they think I prefer classic shapes."

"They certainly look well on you. That's why I thought a nightgown and not a dress."

Lucille felt her face burn as she unlocked the door. She would not be pitied. She did not deserve pity. But she wanted... She did want the crisp feeling of fresh linen against her skin.

Or... Or not linen. She rubbed the soft fabric between her fingers, unfamiliar with it.

"It's cotton," Edith said, reacting to her unspoken question. "From the mills in Manchester."

"Mill owners hate us," Lucille murmured. "We are old money. The baronetcy intimidates them. But Thomas does so love to talk machinery with them. I dare say he would do better talking to their foremen or engineers or the workers. Some of the so-called great millwrights have never set foot in their own factories."

She turned away to pull off her old shift, letting the new one envelop her. She was glad it was not the same as Edith's. All those folds and buttoned up to the neck... No, this was simpler, but it covered everything. Edith knew how much she liked to be covered.

The last time she'd been given such a garment, it had been a hideous grey woollen thing, almost felted from too many washes and a veteran of who knew how many owners.

"Shall I wash the other one?" Edith asked.

"Burn it. You're right. I shouldn't still be wearing Mother's things."

"I didn't mean..."

"I know you didn't. But this is what you do. You catalyse change, as Thomas would say. And I need change."

Edith seemed to hesitate a while, biting her lip.

"If you allowed me to measure you, I could order a new dress or two. And maybe... Maybe you could continue your story while I did it?"

Yes. But not here. Lucille did not want her sanctuary filled with any more ghosts from the past. And yet she wasn't prepared to go downstairs either. Such an action could easily be misconstrued as her being ready to rejoin the household.

"Your bedroom," she said. "It will be warm there."

Edith seemed embarrassed but she nodded, leading the way out of the old nursery and along to the stairs. Lucille took the opportunity to look up to the new ceiling again, almost missing the hole. How strange to miss what had always caused her pain. It was like losing a tooth and prodding at the bare gum, searching for something no longer there.

She'd always thought of the house as breathing when the wind howled about the place, wreaking havoc with the fires, but now she realised it had been more like wheezing. The dying breaths of a great felled beast.

The old bedroom had Edith's touch all over it. The furnishings had all been cleaned, the wood polished to a shine, a book open by the bed and her nightgown laid out.

And then Lucille saw what had embarrassed her. The indentation on the pillow. The razor blade out for use. Thomas had been here. He'd slept here. She touched the place where his head had lain, hearing Edith stammer a little behind her.

"He came down last night," she said. "After he had been with you. And we didn't..."

"I told him to be kind to you. It's not your fault that I am vexing him and you shouldn't suffer for it. I'm glad he's trying."

"The bed is... It's very large. When you're ready..."

"Perhaps. We shall see what works best."

Edith's cheeks were tinged pink as she fetched her measuring tape and began making a list of all the numbers she would need, beginning with the distance from her waist to the floor. Lucille held the tape in place without needing to be asked, watching curiously as Edith flitted about her and then over to the dressing table, carefully making notes.

"I thought the doctor was my friend," Lucille said, not wanting to delay any more than she already had. "I thought he would help me. But he is the one who had me sent away."

An extended arm, shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist.

"When Mother caught Thomas and I together, I saw no other choice. She had to die that we might live. I made my explanation foolproof. Hid the weapon. Made sure Thomas knew exactly what to say. And then the doctor came and looked at me and he... He knew. I could see it in his eyes. He knew I had done it.

"He examined us individually. If Mother had been in good health and fully mobile, he would have found numerous injuries on us both. She could still inflict other things of course. Humiliation and neglect. And I had the marks of a fight on me, bruises and scratches, but nothing that spoke of beatings. He came to a logical conclusion. That I was mad. That I'd killed both my parents and if left alone would kill my brother too.

"I had anticipated leaving the house. We were children. We could not be left there by ourselves, even though we had essentially been supporting ourselves for some time. But I thought we would be together, I never thought..."

Tears came to her eyes at the memory, the way strange men had arrived to collect her, how she had screamed and fought when she realised what was happening and heard Thomas's anguished cries as he was held back from her.

"I screamed all the way to the asylum. Until I had no voice left to scream with. And they were so cold. They stripped me naked immediately, all fourteen years of me, and held me down as they clipped off my hair. Fear of lice, they said. I was dirty and wrong and they would make me better. I wonder if they know just how much they made me worse."

Edith's arms around her, too briefly as she measured her waist. An embrace would have been welcome, but she was too proud to ask.

"Do you want to hear what they did to me?"

She gazed down into Edith's eyes, so big and full of aching compassion. What must it be like to feel so easily, she wondered.

"No. But if you want to tell it or need to then I would hear it for your sake."

She considered it. Would it help to relive that pain? Perhaps. But perhaps not.

"Their sins are not my sins," she said thoughtfully. "So I shall progress to when Thomas came for me. How he had grown. Strong and beautiful. And he took me back here, carried me across the threshold, held me close. I felt as though I had not been touched in so long. Or at least, I had not been touched with care. It was... It was amazing."

She could almost feel it again. A gentle touch, lips against hers, warm sighs echoing in her ears. Her skin tingled with the memory, goose bumps on her arms.

"Sorry," Edith said. "Are you cold? I'm finished."

She wasn't, but the bed was calling to her. Somewhere soft and warm... Her pile of blankets was functional but not the most comfortable.

"Lie with me," she said.

Edith seemed a little unsure, but she undid her dress, slipping under the blanket in her petticoat. The pillow smelled of Thomas. It was comforting, familiar.

"It was so strange to come home. It had been run down when we'd left, but in the meantime, the roof had fallen and the floor had begun to sink. I had... I had grown and so it seemed smaller, and yet the task of mending it was insurmountable. Thomas had such plans. His great machine. He drew it up here, made the first working model. But we had no money. Oh, we could live. We sold a lot of Mother and Father's old things. But it wasn't enough for the engine and the repairs."

She watched Edith's chest, her breathing growing sharp and shallow. She knew what was to come soon. They both did.

Lucille rolled onto her back, looking up at the bed drapes. They were so clean now. She could even make out some darning work, mending the holes the moths had left. She could just imagine Edith with a needle and carefully fixing each little tear.

"It was my idea," she whispered. "We needed money. So we would marry it. Women are easier to manipulate. They have fewer options. We knew what to look for - rich, lonely, past her prime. Someone who wouldn't believe her luck when Thomas flirted with her, danced with her, who would gladly accept when he proposed without a thought. We went to Edinburgh with twin missions - to search for investment and to find a wife. Margaret was perfect. An only child, parents already dead. Nearing thirty, desperate and needy. But her money wasn't enough to last. And... And she irritated me."

Nothing Thomas could say was enough to soothe her jealousy. No amount of swearing that he cared nothing for Margaret and her simpering ways. Her heart burned, knowing that he so much as held her hand.

"We hadn't planned to kill her. But... But we needed more money than she had. And every day that she lived, she spent more of her money. She was frivolous. The roof was rotting more and more and yet she wanted to host dances. Wanted to bring strangers here, let them poke around, let them see how we lived... I couldn't bear it. And so I made sense of things. If she died, Thomas would inherit what remained of her money and we could pour it into the machine and begin to earn for ourselves. The question was how to make it seem like a natural death."

"So you poisoned her," Edith said softly.

Lucille closed her eyes and sighed out all the air from her chest.

"And so I poisoned her."


	26. Chapter 26

Edith was almost trembling. Her eyes could not stop shifting, her breath shaking. Lucille longed to touch her, to embrace her. And yet, she sensed that doing so would only increase her unease.

And no wonder. She was hearing of her predecessors' demise. How could she trust her new family? How could she bear to live with them? How would she ever feel safe in this house?

"How can you even lie here with me?" Lucille said softly. "Don't I terrify you?"

Edith's lips were pressed together so tightly they were white. Her carefully coiffed hair was a little crushed by the pillow. She was honest, open, vulnerable and achingly beautiful.

"You're like a flame," she whispered. "I'm know you can be dangerous and yet I don't want to leave the warmth I feel when I'm around you."

"I might burn you."

"Perhaps. But it's my decision to risk that."

Lucille closed her eyes. A flame. She'd never thought of herself like that. Fast and chaotic destruction... No, she was slow and steady. Like a flood. A river. Eroding and smoothing little by little until she engulfed and drowned her victims.

"Margaret did not fear me," she said. "She pitied me. I could see it in her eyes, the way she looked at me. Her eyes would linger on my scars and I could see her dull, slow mind working. 'Poor, _old_ Lucille, what man would ever want her? I should be kind.' She was delusional. She convinced herself that Thomas really loved her, really wanted her. That he saw some beauty in her... I don't just mean in her face, but in her mind. The world is full of stupid men with beautiful, boring wives who grow into faded, boring wives. It would take a special kind of stupidity to choose one already plain with not a single spark to recommend her. Her pitying looks used to make me laugh. She thought I envied her."

"And didn't you?" Edith asked, voice thick with emotion. "She was in the position that was rightfully yours, after all. Lady Sharpe."

Like stepping on a pin, a hideous, sharp pain lancing through her. Why was Edith so quick to tear away the lies she told herself?

"She did not appreciate it," she snapped. "She treated it as her destiny, her entitlement, not a gift bestowed upon her. We were going to let her live out her days. I swear we were. And then one day I found the rat poison in my hands, Mother's old blue china, Thomas looking at me so strangely..."

_"What are you doing?" he'd asked from the doorway, eyes wide._

_She dropped the box like it had burned her, reflexive._

_"She's spending too much. She'll bankrupt us again at this rate..."_

"Did he try to stop you?" Edith asked.

Should she tell the truth? Should she portray Thomas as some thwarted hero, a protective soul? Or should she say what actually happened, how she remembered it?

"Lucille?"

Edith's hand gently on her cheek, encouraging her to open her eyes and meet her own. Large and worried, a little damp.

"Do you want the truth? Or do you want comfort?"

The choice had to be agonising. Would she turn away or was her desire to know stronger than her fear?

"I do not believe I will be comforted until I know the truth," she said.

Such wisdom in that young head. Probably too much reading as a child.

Lucille turned her head a little to the side and kissed Edith's palm.

"He stopped me the first time I tried to poison her. He told me I was exhausted, in need of rest, the stress of the change making me nervous. He took me to bed. Distracted me for the night. And yet, the thought would not leave me. I needed to talk of it."

_"We brought her here to help us survive. What use is that if she hastens our end?"_

_"I understand, but I feel this needs more thought. If she dies suddenly, it will be suspicious."_

_"Then what if she dies at the end of a long illness?"_

"He told me I had to be careful. What if two and two were added together to make four? Conclusions reached, convictions sought? I realised that they would think him the mastermind. He would be hanged for it, while I was sent back to the asylum for more attempts to cure me with no hope of freedom. No hope of anything. He was right. We had to be slow. And we justified it to ourselves. She would grow older and more unhappy as she realised Thomas did not love her. The land here, the isolation, it would drain her. No-one was left to care for her. It was better for her to die under the illusion that she was loved."

A sob. Edith crying. She was trying to hold it back, shoulders shaking, one hand covering her face. Lucille looked at her curiously, like she was an interesting specimen in a glass case.

"Are you frightened?"

"No, it's... It's just horrible that no-one loved her. She had no friends. She was all alone and didn't know it."

"Isn't that better? Not to know, not to feel it?"

No response. Perhaps Edith didn't know how she reacted to that, not enough to put it into words. She sighed and shook her head helplessly. Perhaps thinking of her own situation. No family, her only friends on the other side of an ocean.

"She felt cared for towards the end," Lucille said, as if it made it better. "I nursed her through the worst of it. I didn't... I didn't want her to suffer, I just wanted her to die. But we didn't know what we were doing, how to go about it. We kept the dose low and made her linger on for months longer than we meant to. She used to hold my hand. It's very.... Very intimate, waiting for someone to die. Knowing you are the last thing they'll ever know. I almost felt privileged in a strange way."

She was trying to shock now. Feeling the deep horror of her soul like a barb and driving it deep, trying to chase Edith away. Testing to see if she would run. Almost hoping she would, hoping she would escape the evil that lived in her heart. And it had to be evil. How else could she talk of this so dispassionately?

"I remember my mother dying," Edith said quietly. "And it was not like that."

"What was it like?"

"Awful. I felt cursed. I wished my father had not let me into the room, that he had spared me."

Such difference between them. Edith had only lost people she loved. Her mother and father. Kind parents, ones who wanted the best for their child, the way things ought to be. Lucille still had all she cared about. Death had always come for those she hated, or was indifferent towards.

She heard the great door close downstairs, Edith startling at it.

"Should I distract him while you go back up?"

The bed was so soft, so warm. She didn't want to leave it yet.

"No. He'll smell that I've been here. If he comes, he comes."

She closed her eyes again, tired somehow from reliving old memories, stirring new emotions, and wondered how exasperated Thomas was about to be.

Who knew? Maybe he'd even be relieved. At least she was out of the jar she'd put herself in.


	27. Chapter 27

Thomas did not appear at once. The women lay quietly, listing to the way the house reacted to him. Footsteps on the floor, doors creaking, the air changing in room after room. It put Lucille in mind of a great, sad, old dog, able only to whine and thump its tail to greet its master.

She'd been in this position before, alone in the master bedroom with the wives. Thomas did not like to be there towards the end. He didn't like to see them weaken and die. He would busy himself with a thousand things, rattle around downstairs while Lucille whispered that everything was all right, he was just occupied with the engine, he would come up soon...

And now here she was with Edith. Warm, safe, _alive_ and nervous Edith. And yet despite her evident fear, she held her ground. There was bravery in that little frame. The strength that made her stand firm against the horror, that made her determined to right both the wrongs of their victims and the wrongs done to Lucille and Thomas. A nobility that could not be inherited.

Maybe that was what made her fascinating. Maybe that was what Thomas had seen. Integrity and sincerity and kindness. All the things they had turned away from the outside world were bright and shining in Edith.

She did not flinch when Lucille took her wrist, pressing her fingers against her pulse and finding it quick, but not racing.

Downstairs, Thomas played a scale on the piano, slowly and with missteps in it.

"He misses you," Edith whispered. "Some nights he stares at the piano, frowning, as if he could will you to appear at it."

Lucille's fingers felt unflexed and under-used. And yet she did miss it. And she missed the sound of Thomas singing with her.

Maybe they could teach Edith the songs too.

The very thought of it surprised her. So recently she would have burned the piano rather than let that happen. It was a secret thing, hers and Thomas's alone, and part of her still clung to that.

New songs then. Songs for three.

"Edith?" they heard Thomas call. "Edith?"

After a moment's thought, she slipped from the bed, squeezing Lucille's fingers and putting on her dressing gown.

Lucille concentrated on the feel of her own heart beating, the swell of her lungs, even she fancied the soft glide of blood in her veins. She heard Edith's soft footfall down the stairs, the gentle hum of distant voices.

They must have agreed to leave her in peace - or Edith convinced Thomas of it - for the blankets and pillows soon conspired against her, holding her warm and safe until her eyes closed and sleep took her.

The next thing she knew was the smells of dinner and fear seizing her as her eyes flashed open, barely able to register the pair of them standing in the doorway holding trays, planning to keep her here no doubt. The blankets impeded her escape, tangling round her ankles like the tendrils of some carnivorous plant intent on devouring her.

"Hush," came Thomas's voice cutting through her panic. "Calm down, it's all right. Just sit up a little."

He would be so upset if she left now. Desolate. And what if Edith had promised him that if he left her for the afternoon, she would stay for dinner? He would not be cruel to her, but she would bear the brunt of his disappointment.

They would not understand that she was trying to protect them, trying to keep her corrupting influence away until she had scoured her very being. Until she could silence the whispers in her mind that told her to lash out.

Thomas was a mirror. For years she had kept him from other influences, only allowing him to reflect her, as if that could keep him with her alone. Now with Edith here, his own goodness was beginning to shine through. The little boy who wanted nothing more than to please his sister. The little engineer who dreamed of automatons and machines to make life better.

Sometimes she wondered if she would have still loved him if their lives had been different, their childhood kinder. Perhaps. A more fraternal love, uncorrupted by their need for affection. Would he look at her with such desperation, such need? Would he treat her blood as his, her heart's beat as vital as his own to existence?

Would he have reflected her love back at her then?

There was no escape. She had to allow Edith to pull up the pillow to support her back, allow Thomas to slip in beside her. How could they bear to be so close to her? Could they not sense how dangerous it was to be near? Had they forgotten what she was?

"I killed your father," she said as Edith brought her meal close.

Edith looked away while Thomas hushed her again, rousing the monster. This was true. They couldn't ignore it.

"I did," she insisted. "I murdered him."

"I know," Edith said quietly. "And he is the last person you will ever kill."

She sounded so sure. How could she be so adamant? Lucille felt as though nothing was real any more. This couldn't be real. It didn't make sense for this to be happening, it didn't make sense for Thomas to be beside her, warm and calm. And it certainly didn't make sense for Edith to be sitting on the end of the bed.

"It'll get cold," she said, as though everything was perfectly normal.

Lucille felt herself eat, unable to taste for concern. She knew Edith intended to keep her here, to make everyone safe by imprisoning her. But did she really think the task would be so easy?

She wasn't ready. She could feel it, the beating of her wings against glass, the urge to rebel and resist even what she knew was for her own benefit. Even what she longed for.

Thomas's arm snaked around her waist, so familiar and enough to send goosebumps across her skin. Her body shared none of her mind's troubles. It had always been like that. Her racing thoughts would question everything while her body only knew how much it craved such simple touch.

"Stay," he whispered. "Stay here with us tonight."

She wanted nothing more.

She feared nothing more.

This was too fast.


	28. Chapter 28

It wasn't as though he could mistake the quick swelling of her ribs, the way her lungs were desperate for air. The room seemed stifling, suffocating.

She almost flinched away when he reached out to stroke her cheek, the action making her shiver even while she felt heat rise to her face unbidden.

"You've been letting your thoughts get the better of you up there," he murmured. "Getting all tied up in guilt and fear and memories. You should be free and down here with us."

She stared at him, his touch still burning. Why couldn't he see? They had never been free. From birth, the house had been their prison. The family, the title, the mines... And that was good, for when they went out, what happened? They brought women home and killed them.

Was it freedom to be down here? Was it freedom if the beast didn't know it was caged? Or pretended not to notice?

Could she learn not to feel the bars against her back, to ignore the scratch of straw beneath her feet?

"You used to tell me everything," Thomas said, his voice growing ever softer. "And now I am left to wonder what thoughts are flitting behind your eyes. I wish you would tell me."

Everything? Is that really what he thought? So trusting... He really didn't know how much she hid from him, how much she held back so that he wouldn't see?

"You want to know what I've been thinking?" she asked, flat and hollow, not giving him time to respond. "I've been thinking that you ought to have left me in the asylum."

The change was immediate. He slowly drew his hand away and she set her jaw, ready to counter whatever arguments he threw at her. Just as she always had. She was the elder and had always been able to win disputes. It was the way of things.

"He wouldn't have survived without you," Edith said, both of their heads whipping to look at her.

"He'd have found someone else."

Even as she said it, Lucille doubted herself. He might have done. But the man she'd met after all those years apart did not have half the strength Thomas had now. He had been fresh from education, which had taught him all manner of clever things and yet had not included any kind of accounting or financial learning. They had even taught him to dance properly and yet not that.

Men like him ought to afford accountants, after all. Never mind that they were an unnecessary expense in a world full of unnecessary expenses.

Most women did not use their intelligence to attract husbands, not in their circles anyway. Apparently it made them uncomfortable. And that was what Thomas needed, someone to handle the day to day running of everything, not someone with more grace than sense. He had quite enough of that himself.

For goodness' sake, he had spent almost every penny they had to buy her freedom. He was hardly fiscally responsible.

Edith laughed, though she didn't seem amused.

"Would you have found someone else, had it been Thomas locked away?"

No. Of course not. But that didn't matter, that wasn't the point. Everything bad that had happened had been her. Every killing, every pain, it had all been her. He'd gone along with it because that's how they'd always been.

"I need you to make the hard decisions," Thomas said. "To prioritise outgoings, to make the choice of what to sacrifice."

"I chose to sacrifice innocent people."

She refused to let them try to talk her round. She couldn't be rushed. It was important.

"And we need Edith," Thomas said, as if he hadn't heard her. "To keep us from the edge. To keep us safe."

"What from?"

"From ourselves."

He didn't know what he was saying. Or rather he did and he knew it was not so. It was not them, it was her. Despite all those years of avoiding getting fully involved in their crimes, here he was, trying to take equal blame.

How dare he?

"From me. She will be protecting everyone from me. Don't lie to me. We all know the truth."

"Do we?" Thomas said. "Because sometimes I think you've managed to twist it into something completely different."

She didn't have to listen to this. Making her think what she knew to be true was not. A trick, that was all. And from the very people she could not help but trust. She scrambled out of bed, experiment over.

"Lucille, wait."

They had both said it, but it was Edith she heeded. Something in her, some desire for redemption, driving her to listen for once. She stopped in her tracks and even let Edith come and block the door, trapping her.

"What is it you want, Lucille?"

What was it... What?

 _Wanting_ did not come into it. She was compelled to protect Thomas, destined to need him, cursed by every wicked deed she'd ever committed. There was no want about it, no conscious one anyway.

And yet the question nipped at her, a tick that threatened to bleed her dry, a sharp irritation needing scratched.

"I want to be punished for what I have done," she whispered.

"But you know you cannot seek that outside," Edith said. "You know what they would do."

Yes, she did, bitter tears unshed. Much as he kept trying to take, they would give Thomas half the blame. He would be the one on the gallows and she would be lucky indeed to join him.

No, they would send her back to the place she should never have left. And she would endure it if only she knew Thomas was safe. If only...

"Do you understand now why I am trying to punish myself?"

She couldn't even look at Thomas. She could feel his horror.

"I have an idea," Edith said quietly, taking Lucille's hands in her own, so warm ones.

Without meaning to, her eyes had dropped to the floor, the rug beneath her feet strangely blue-grey, eaten away by carpet beetles, a stormy sky that she was somehow standing upon. After an age, Lucille looked up, finding Edith's gaze so steady and unmoving. And she was struck by her youth. She'd thought from the beginning that she was too young.

How could she be so young and yet seem so wise?

"What idea?"

Lucille's lips were so dry, her heart so loud.

"We will punish you. If that is what you need."

Need...

Need was much closer to what she felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm anticipating only around one (or maybe two) more chapter(s) for this one. And hopefully it won't take too long.
> 
> (And thanks to "Bandit Keith" for leaving me a comment that helped give me the kick to actually finish this chapter and post it.)


	29. Chapter 29

They began slowly. Edith made Lucille sleep downstairs, between the two of them, Thomas firm and unyielding at her back, Edith's hand loosely wrapped around her wrist, grounding her. Something to concentrate on. The heat of them was almost overwhelming, but in a strangely pleasant way. Like she had forgotten how to be warm and was being taught how to feel such things again.

The following morning, for the first time in months, Lucille got dressed and made her way down to the ground floor. Thomas was already in town on business, but Edith came with her, a constant presence. A shadow in yellow silk.

Everything had changed. Subtle things. She had always done her best to keep at least the kitchen clean, but it was difficult. The subsidence and the rising damp and the rainfall had always conspired to ruin her efforts. She had seen the entrance hall from the landing, the evidence of repairs being done, but they seemed to be paused. The roof must have been expensive, must have wiped out much of Edith's inheritance.

The kitchen though...

Everything was still there. The table, the drawers, the range and the boiler. But there was so much light now. The windows had been scrubbed, the oozing wall strengthened and replastered. Whether it would hold was still a question, but without the constant influx of cold and damp from the hall, keeping everything warm and dry would be much easier.

In fact, only a couple of items were obviously missing. The blue tea set and the jars. The murder implements. Lucille wanted to ask what had been done with them, if they had been destroyed, but her tongue did not seem to work.

She sat, head so full as Edith prepared porridge and boiled water for tea, pouring it from a fresh, white china set complete with cups. They were like bones beneath Lucille's fingers, breakable but strong.

"A late wedding present," Edith said to her unasked question. "From my friend Dr McMichael."

"Very handsome."

The porridge was sweetened with jam, so different from the plain water gruel Lucille and Thomas had lived on for so long.

She didn't want it. She didn't deserve such sweetness. Edith had never made her eat such things in her hermitage.

Was this a reward for coming downstairs?

She ate without protest, the warmth spreading through her body, the rich, tart flavour so very intense. Before she even knew it, she had finished and Edith was taking their bowls to the sink.

"I should..."

"No," Edith said, her voice firm but gentle too somehow. "I want you to sit and breathe. Concentrate on your breathing."

Torture. Her fingers were restless, plucking at threads in the cuffs of her dress, pulling them loose. She was aware of every inhale, the cold of rushing air at her nose, the filling of her lungs, the muscles moving to expel it. And she waited and waited and waited for Edith to finish, reaching a strange stillness as she took breath after breath.

"Well, shall we?" Edith said. "I'm sure the accounts would benefit from your eye."

Lucille frowned, feeling like an animal of some kind, confused by a new command. Edith took her hand, squeezing lightly, and let her towards the parlour.

Little had changed here at least. The huge fireplace still blackened, the curtains still threatening to fall into moth-eaten nets at any time, the piano...

She went to it immediately, the keys seeming almost warm beneath her fingers, like it was alive. Still in tune. Lovingly kept free of dust. And she could feel her mother's oily gaze burning into her back just as it always had.

"Lucille."

Edith had pulled out her old chair, the ledgers open on the desk. Lucille felt herself walk, one foot in front of the other, settling into her old place.

Neat handwriting swirled away across the pages, careful notes of income and outgoings. Food, repairs, fuel. Inheritance, clay and...

"What is this payment?" she asked, pointing.

"It's the initial payment from the publisher for my manuscript. I have the receipt for it in with the others."

The novel.

"You finished it."

"Yes," Edith said simply. "I was able to write the romance finally. Because I learned what love is. Complex and unfathomable and capable of driving people to terrible things. And wonderful things too."

Face flushing, Lucille turned back to the work, letting silence fall. It was strangely comfortable, companionable. She relaxed almost without realising. Everything was exactly where it always was, the inkwell in place when she reached for it, the blotter, the pens.

Everything was as it should be. Except even after checking the numbers three times, she kept coming to the same conclusion.

Surplus. They had money. More coming in than going out. Not a lot, but some. They could save. Eventually they would be able to finish repairing. It would take a long time, but she could see it now, the floor polished and shining, the bannisters restored, everything back to how it was so long ago before the rot had set in.

But better. For now she had Thomas and Edith with her and nothing would harm them. She would harm no one else. They would stop her. It was perfect.

And yet, it felt wrong somehow. She did not deserve this. If this was punishment, it was not nearly harsh enough.

"This is not right," she said suddenly, leaping to her feet. "I... I can't, I..."

"Lucille," Edith said, and suddenly her voice had something of a harshness to it, something that made her stop. "Go to the piano. Play for me."

"But..."

"Don't think. Just play."

Blinking, unsure, Lucille obeyed, her hands coming up onto the keys before her mind caught up. There was music in front of her, not pieces she recognised, and her fingers faltered over the unfamiliar chords, slowly learning and repeating and correcting the opening bars.

Her breathing slowed. The tension left her shoulders. Legato. Molto delicatamente. One, two, three...

She felt Edith's presence, the hairs on her arms standing on end before there was a hand on her shoulder, a low murmur in her ear.

"Beautiful. Very good."

The praise thrilled her, a little sigh escaping her lips, the last notes freezing in the air, phrase unfinished as Edith sat next to her and laid a gentle kiss on her cheek.

"I never learned piano. Will you show me?"

There was a strange intimacy in it. Moving Edith's wrist to the right position, watching as her fingers climbed up and down the scales, how elegant she was. Lucille was quite hypnotised by it.

"Do you feel better now?"

The question was quiet, almost shy. And it required consideration.

"A little. But I still... I need more, I need..."

"Restraint?"

What an apt term. She had not realised it before, but that was exactly it. She had locked herself away in an attempt to restrain herself.

"Thomas and I had ideas," Edith continued, her voice never moving above that gentle softness. "Ideas that involved ropes. If you would let us, we could tie you down."

The very idea terrified her. And yet, that was what she wanted, to be made uncomfortable, even to be hurt perhaps. Going through those awful things again, trusting that she could but speak out and be released.

"Only if you want it, Lucille. Only if you trust us to do it."

"Do you have ropes ready?"

"No. But I do have ribbons. It would be softer. I don't want to hurt you."

"Hmm. I think I rather like the idea of burns on my wrists and ankles..."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Edith lick her lips. How interesting.

"Maybe you and I could try before Thomas gets home?"

For so long, intimacy and passion were her sanctuary, her body protecting her from her mind, with Thomas's help. It could be so again, perhaps. She could learn to let go, to accept her past and present.

Her mind began to go pleasantly still as Edith led her upstairs, smoothing the blankets before unlacing her clothes, undressing her little by little, layer by layer.

Shivers ran through her with each pass of Edith's lips against her skin, kissing her scars and her freckles and breasts so gently. Almost tentatively.

"Lie down for me. Hands by the headboard."

A childish urge to rebel rushed through her, lying down with her arms held obstinately by her side. Edith had turned away to find her ties and sighed when she saw, calmly taking hold of Lucille's wrists to bind them to the wood. Gentle tugging showed that she was trapped. It felt good though.

"You should have done as you were told," Edith said, voice light as she knelt on the end of the bed.

"Why?"

"Because now I'm going to make you wait."

By the time Thomas came home in the early afternoon, she was desperate. Edith had stripped to her drawers, but no further and had spent hours touching every inch of Lucille's skin with the tips of her fingers, kissing her lips as she reached down between her legs, her most sensitive place. But every time she got close to climax, Edith would stop, leaving her with a frustrated heat in her core, sobbing and fighting against the ribbons to no avail.

"Please," she begged the moment she saw Thomas in the doorway. "Please, please..."

"What vision is this?" he asked. "I must be dreaming."

"I explained our idea to Lucille," Edith said, only a slight breathlessness revealing her arousal. "And we agreed to try it, but, well, then she was very disobedient and so as punishment, I decided to make her wait for you to join us. Though I feel I punished myself in the attempt also."

He chuckled, undoing his cravat and shirt.

"I should see to you first then?" he asked. "Make her wait even more?"

Lucille shook her head violently, arching her back, rubbing her thighs together in a desperate bid for friction.

"No," Edith said. "I think she's learned her lesson."

Gasping for breath, Lucille spread her legs in silent pleading. Thomas chuckled darkly at her, shedding the rest of his clothes and crawling onto the bed. His touch was almost too much for her hypersensitive flesh and yet not nearly enough...

"Oh, Lucille," he breathed. "She has been terribly cruel to you, hasn't she?"

"Cruel to be kind," Edith countered, taking her place next to Lucille on the bed, one hand between her legs already, waiting to enjoy the show.

"Thomas, please, I need..."

Her words became a cry as he pushed into her, finally, finally, all the stimulation making her so wet and open that he could be fast and rough right from the start.

She whimpered and squirmed, arms straining against the ribbons, thighs tight around his waist and overwhelmed...

Not enough. And she could not touch herself, denied once more, no, no, please...

Edith. Edith's fingers found their mark again, circles and rubbing in just the right way, so close, so close...

She did not believe it had ever been so intense before. Her every nerve was alight, every muscle tensing and clenching, head thrown back as the waves kept rolling through her, almost screaming with it.

She went limp, her chest heaving, barely able to open her eyes.

"Lucille?" Edith's voice beside her, worried. "Are you well?"

Her lips felt dry. It was hard to think, let alone talk.

"Thomas," she whispered. "Your wife has not yet found completion. And nor have you. Perhaps you can assist one another."

She was distantly aware of them beside her, the sighs and gasps as they finished quickly, the sound of skin against skin making her smile. Her two loves. How sweet they were together.

Almost dozing, she felt them untie her, rubbing the red marks on her wrists gently and holding her close with kisses and caresses.

"Was that punishment sufficient?" Edith asked.

Lucille heard herself laugh.

"Maybe it could be more intense next time."


	30. Chapter 30

Not everything was so easy, but it did become easier over time. The days in which Lucille wanted to hide away in her little prison became fewer and fewer. The invisible bonds loosened until she could almost forget them, but whenever she needed to feel the knots at her wrists or the light slap of a firm hand, Edith or Thomas was always there to help her.

It was so strange. She had been hit so many times as a child, blows of hate and disappointment and yet this...

It was different. It physically hurt, yes, but never more than she could take. They never let her fall, never let her break without piecing her back together. Sometimes together, sometimes apart.

Edith was the harsher one. You wouldn't believe it to look at her, but she had a deep well of inventive eroticism within her. Dark and deep. She was more likely to push Lucille's boundaries to the limit, but then again was also the one to hold and soothe her in daylight hours whenever the shadows came for her.

Which was not to say that Thomas did not enjoy what they did together. He just brought his own inventiveness to it. More than once, Lucille and Edith stumbled upon him doodling extremely interesting devices on scraps of paper. Most unable to be made in reality, at least not safely. Steam power might be rebuilding their fortunes but none of them liked the idea of scalds in intimate places.

They still had time alone as pairs, of course. Sometimes Thomas wanted the peace and warmth of their old room, wanted Lucille to be in control of the situation. Sometimes she and Edith would find themselves at a loose end during the day and tumble amongst the sheets, giggling and not thinking about anything except each other.

They learned every sigh, every spot that might elicit a gasp, a moan, a little involuntary sound... Some days they could lose hours in such pleasant activities. Other times they 'economised', saving themselves for Thomas's return to indulge together all the more intensely.

But things changed. They had to. They were changing all the time, inside and out. New investors, new sales, new publishers, new curtains, new music books.

Lucille knew of the biggest change before Edith did. Perhaps it was a strange extra sense, born of spending so much time becoming intimately acquainted with her body. Perhaps it was the ghosts quietly whispering in her ear. They no longer tried to frighten her now, not now she had a diligent keeper to restrain her. And perhaps they knew it too, before Edith's eyes grew wide, her face pale and full of concern.

"See a doctor," Lucille urged her after the third day that even water porridge make her nauseated at breakfast. "He'll be able to tell you for sure."

Those beautiful eyes, so dark despite her light hair, showed all her fear. She did not know this feeling, had never heard it described. No wonder. Her mother had passed too soon to tell her of it.

"What if it's not?" she whispered. "What if I'm I'll or..."

"I recognise this. You are pregnant, Edith. And worrying will do you no good. You must have it confirmed."

Lips pressed together, eyes downcast, like she did so long ago when they were afraid of each other. It was intensely puzzling to see that meek creature from Buffalo reappearing.

"You're not angry with me, are you?"

The question stunned her. Angry? Whyever would she be angry?

"I know you wanted your own," Edith said miserably, the edge of a sob in her voice as she answered the unasked question. "I didn't mean to. I was trying to be careful, to count the days..."

How strange to be the one doing the comforting after such a long time. She had fallen out of practice with it, but the skills of her youth had evidently not fully left her as she held Edith close, stroking her hair, pressing kisses to her scalp.

"It will be yours and Thomas's," she said, pretending she did not feel hot tears seeping through her dress. "And it will be wanted and loved, by all of us. How could I possibly be angry about that?"

She said these things. In truth, jealousy did begin to crawl its insidious way into her heart once again as Edith began to expand and glow. She was so golden already. Did nature really need to give her this as well? Thomas's hand upon her belly unconsciously in the night and deliberately in the day, smiling as he felt his child move...

He had not looked at her like that when her body had changed. Had it been because they were unhappy and tense, Enola still with them, risk and violence at every turn? Or had he feared, correctly, that their child would know only pain and suffering in his short life?

Lucille tried to withdraw subtly. They were happy together, husband, wife and soon an infant. They did not need her.

But Edith would not let her. She found little ways that Lucille could help her, small tasks that helped prove that she was valued, even if just to massage swollen ankles and listen to her fears.

And what fears they were. The pain, the blood, the risk of something going wrong, the aftermath, the sudden arrival of a tiny person needing constant care. Ought they find a nurse for it? Or would the three of them manage themselves?

The idea of letting a stranger into their home did not appeal to Lucille. They managed without servants after all, cooking and cleaning and handling everything, only seeking outside help for tasks they lacked the skills to accomplish like repairing walls or cleaning chimneys. They could manage this too, surely. Plenty people did.

As the time grew nearer and nearer, more and more changed. Thomas began to worry increasingly, desperately whispering his concerns to Lucille as they curled together in bed or on the rug before the fire after Edith had waddled off for the night, exhausted by the effort of growing new life and carrying it with her always.

It became a routine, the pair of them entangled, long kisses as though they could only drink from each other's lips, slow and gentle when he finally entered her, sometimes gripping her wrists to pin her down, but nothing harsher than that.

And always talking afterwards. Cuddling close, his hands on her chest, bodies fitting together so neatly.

She could still protect him from his fears and prided herself in that.

"He was a monster," Thomas murmured once. "Father. What if... What if I go that way after it is born? What if I cannot be around children?"

"Hush. You are nothing like him. You never were. You never could be."

"His blood is my blood, Lucille."

"Maybe it was, once. But he is dead and our blood is our own now. I was a monster and now I am not. We don't have to be what we fear."

It was a mantra she kept repeating to herself. The monstrousness and the horror lived in her, within her every cell, her veins and skin. It breathed with her and ate her food and she could not kill it, not completely, but she could hold it back. With help. And work.

It became harder and harder with every inch that Edith swelled, like she might burst, her breasts spilling over the top of her dresses. Lucille had to cope by herself and prepare for the birth, make sure there were always fresh towels and pots for hot water, like talismans fending off evil spirits. Or malevolent ghosts.

She could feel them more strongly than she had in weeks. Not visible, but there, hiding in the corners of every room. Watching over their champion. And Edith was frightened of them, talked to them when she thought Lucille couldn't hear, begging them to leave her alone, to leave her child be. Praying for it to be swift. Asking them for help if they would give it.

When the time finally came in the middle of the night, it was Lucille's hand she gripped, her name on her lips, eyes like saucers as Thomas rushed, ashen faced, to fetch the doctor.

"It will be well," Lucille insisted, though she didn't know who she was trying to reassure exactly. "Breathe for me. Deep breaths."

The blood... The blood was everywhere, on her hands and nightdress, the stench of it filling her nostrils, so familiar and awful and Edith's screams of pain...

Was that Edith? Was that her? Was it the child or Enola or Pamela, Margaret, Mother, Father, Carter... Her own son?

She was barely aware of the doctor arriving and moving her physically out of the way, of Edith reaching for her desperately, her crimson hands staining that pale skin as she gripped tight, almost convinced she could feel each contraction and pang within herself, as if they shared a body somehow.

It took hours. Hours of agony and blood and shining instruments that Lucille wished she hadn't seen until finally, _finally,_ a new cry. New tiny lungs, full of air and life, pink skin and a shock of black hair.

"A girl."

"A girl?"

It wasn't her place to hold her, not yet, though her arms seemed to ache with want for it. A snip of the cord and Thomas found himself holding his child - his daughter - undisguised joy in his face even as she wailed at him.

How had such a little thing made Edith grow so big? How could she make such a noise? The screams continued until she was put on Edith's chest, her little red mouth seeking nourishment from her mother.

It made something roll within Lucille. She'd spent so long trying to perform that small miracle. To feed another. She remembered the ache of being so full of milk with no child there to drink it and the strange emptiness that filled her when she realised the time had passed and that she had run dry.

"Have you considered names?" the doctor asked, rinsing his hands.

Edith looked up, still sweaty and exhausted, Thomas at her side.

"Lucille, come look at her."

Clambering onto the bed, she gazed down into enormous brown eyes, unable to see far yet but trying all the same. Inquisitive and wondering. So like both her parents.

"I... I thought about Eleanor," Edith said in answer finally. "It was my mother's name. But I would rather think on it a while longer."

It seemed to fit though. The name of a kind and loving woman, the legacy of her. Better than any of the family names from the Sharpe line.

They slept, of course, poor exhausted mother and child, while Lucille and Thomas neatened everything up and braced themselves to fetch the cradle from where it had been hidden in the attic, still with blankets made for Eleanor's half-brother.

"Do you feel it?" Thomas asked as they opened the door. "The same feeling as when... when he was born."

Lucille concentrated on breathing deeply, on keeping her voice steady.

"I do not feel the same hopelessness," she said. "Or the sorrow. But I believe I know what you mean. I love her. I loved her the very second I saw her."

Thomas was quiet for a moment.

"Our parents must never have felt that," he said. "Or they would not have treated us the way they did."

There was no way of knowing and Lucille had no intention of wondering about it. She did not care to think of the people who had hurt them so.

"We are not them," she said, moving dustsheets aside. "And she will not suffer as we did."

It took some effort to drag the cradle downstairs, the early morning sun beginning to try to reach through the curtains as Lucille gently took Eleanor from Edith's arms.

Eyes opening slowly, but no tears. Just a look of interest and such intense perception upon a young face. Tiny hands gripped her dress as she tried to put her down among the blankets, clinging on determinedly.

When she finally managed to extract herself from such insistent clutches, Edith and Thomas were both watching her from the bed, tired but happy.

"She told me to beware, you know," Edith whispered sleepily. "My mother. But she surely could not have seen this."

Thomas said nothing, eyes flicking to Lucille's, waiting for her to clarify. The ghosts had never bothered him. This was her domain.

"I imagine she did not want you to suffer," Lucille said. "There were a thousand ways for you to be happy, a thousand worlds in which you could find joy without the suffering you have been through."

"But I am in this one."

Well, yes. They all were.

And considering the myriad worlds Lucille could imagine, worlds of sorrow and death and rejection, she could not help but be glad that for all her suffering, she had got to this point.

A point of love.

A point of family.

She could not undo the sins of her past, but perhaps she could improve the future.

And she had never, ever felt so free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... There you go. 18 months of horribly overdue updates and it's finally finished. This is probably the only time I will write a babies ending, but here it seemed to fit. Hope and family and the prospect of redemption. Just what I wanted for Lucille.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this, especially if you put up with months and months of waiting for new chapters. Your comments have been real encouragement and timely reminders to me to get writing when I had let things lapse. This fic may not have been finished without you. Thank you so, so much.
> 
> (And maybe now I can get round to writing more of my [other Crimson Peak fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8926795/chapters/20448283) /shameless plug.)
> 
> Thank you once again. I wouldn't write if I didn't believe I was brightening even one person's day, so every single kudos is deeply appreciated. Mwah!


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